EDUCATIONISTS concerned for the quality education have laid emphasis on primary school teachers’ dignified salary and social status. To impart basic learning and primary education, the primary school teachers would have to be recruited by maintaining quality while they should also receive proper training to ensure quality teaching. The primary school teachers should not be treated in a way so that they feel discriminated as they work to lay the foundation of students’ future working at primary level of the education.
Currently country’s Head and Assistant teachers of government primary schools are in a movement demanding upgrading of salary scales. They also threatened to go for tougher actions like strikes if their demand was not met. Against this backdrop the World Teachers’ Day observed on Saturday like elsewhere in the world with the theme ‘Young Teachers: The Future of The Profession.’ The number of government primary schools is now 65,593 and the number of teachers in these schools is 349,217. Currently, a Head teacher receives Tk 12,500 under 11th grade and an Assistant teacher receives Tk 10,200 under 14th grade of the National Pay Scale.
Under the pay scale, positions including Administrative Officer and Personal Officer remain under 10th grade, librarians under 11th grade, accountants under 12th grade, steno typists or computer operators under 13th grade and drivers, cashiers and cataloguers under 14th grade. It’s a vital question, if a teacher with Honours and Master degrees draws the same salary a clerk does, how the nation could expect they would teach students in a dedicated manner?
In past, the primary teachers had a dignified social status which was currently absent. Educationists blamed authorities for showing negligence and not respecting teachers by providing them with dignified salaries. Earlier a former education minister promised to introduce a separate salary structure for teachers which did not materialise in the past 10 years.
Countries like Malaysia, Japan and Taiwan have developed incredibly only by investing in education. Sufficient investment in education is absent in Bangladesh. For that reason, some primary school teachers have to work outside for fulfilling their basic needs. The primary school teachers must get a dignified amount of salary.
