NEWS report on Monday said the Education Ministry is having highly prioritized plans, policies and projects in the budget in recent years for development but they have not seen the light of day in most cases because they are not supported by budgetary allocations and such of cohesive plan of actions for implementation. Projects adopted in 2014-2015 budget have either not yet been commenced or are progressing at extremely slow pace and the common factor is lack of budget.
Priority programmes including modernizing madrasha education, setting up child friendly learning centres at remote char areas, haors and tea gardens yet to start rolling. Posting of at least five teachers to every primary school is yet to be implemented, according to the news in review. Education Commission’s officials remarks made the exposure how the recommendations they made in the Education Policy were being sidetracked or moving only at slow pace. Many key elements of the policy were yet to be addressed due to budget crunch as the Finance Minister made no allocation for the Education Policy implementation during the last four fiscals. According to the Annual Primary School Census 2014, published in March 2015, there are about 57.8 percent female teachers in primary schools against the target of 58.4 percent, which appear quite commending. But E-learning has not been implemented so far in all educational institutions although digital contents and multimedia classrooms have been prepared at about 20,500 educational institutions all over the country.
It appears the government is falling back from promises made in the education sector thus adversely affecting the education system of the nation as a whole. It is noticeable that merely having priorities for different projects and policies do not bring an effective change in education system without matching efforts to implement them.
It is pitiful that the budgetary allocation for education is now around 2.2 percent of the GDP as against UNESCO recommendation at minimum six percent. As the years are passing by, the allocation for education has come down to 11 percent from 14 percent of the budget and it explains how all big projects are failing in want of money. Even though establishment of a permanent Education Commission and Accreditation Council for higher education is long on card, budget cuts has made them to delay. Moreover lack of efficient and trained teachers, academic resources and improved educational infrastructure is hampering the growth of education, least to say about quality education. Experts believe that delay in implementing projects and policies caused by bureaucratic ineptness, delayed disbursement of funds and lengthy procurement process needs to be addressed to overcome present educational crisis. Moreover the Education Ministry must have manageable projects backed by quick mobilization of fund for execution. It is better not to waste money in big unmanageable development plans.
