Staff Correspondent
Although some progress has been made in increasing enrolment in primary schools, there are still 14,000 villages in the country where there are no schools at all.
Adviser to the Primary and Mass Education Ministry Rasheda K Choudhury made the revelation at a round table discussion at the daily Prothom Alo auditorium yesterday.
“According to the Primary School Registration Rules, a primary school should be established in every village which has a population of 2000 or more. But there are some 2,000 villages without a school though their population is higher than 2,000,” she said.
The government is however trying to incorporate these villages in the second Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP 2), she said.
At the discussion titled ‘Female Education: Achievement, Discrimination and Duties’ organised by Campaign for Popular Education (Campe) and the daily Prothom Alo, Rasheda also said the process for a unified education programme has already begun.
The caretaker government has also prepared a flexible school calendar and is trying to recruit teachers from the indigenous community to teach indigenous children and school registration rules have been relaxed in the hill tracts areas to help set up more schools there.
Also, structural development has been made mandatory in every new primary school to accommodate children with physical disabilities.
Pointing out the instances where some parents oppose the admission of children from poor communities — as children of cleaners — in ordinary schools, the adviser said that the overall mindset and attitude of people have to change.
Speakers at the session also stressed the need for improvement of vocational education to reduce the drop out rates at school, need for active union parishad standing committees and teachers-parents committees, change in school curriculum, making it mandatory for women to have completed the SSC examination to be eligible to get married and a unified education system in order to make education best effective in the country.
They also pointed out that the two main political parties in the country have not specified strategies for expansion of quality female education in their party manifestos.
While presenting the keynote paper Dr Manzoor Ahmed of the Institute of Educational Development (IED) of BRAC University highlighted that enrolment of the girl child in primary education has been increased significantly while enrolment in secondary level is 47.7 percent for males and 52.3 percent for females at present.
Presided over by acting Director of CAMPE Azizul Haque, Deputy Director of CAMPE Tasneem Athar, Joint Programme Director of PEDP-2 Chowdhury Mufad Ahmed, Joint Secretary of Bureau of Non-formal Education Shyamal Kanti Ghosh, Director of National Disabled Forum Dr Nafisur Rahman, Rokeya Kabir of Nari Pragati Shangha, Shafiul Alam, former director of BANBAIS, Kazi Rafikul Alam of Dhaka Ahsania Mission, Taleya Rehman, Hanna Begum, Nahid Nazrul, Anwara Begum and Nilufer Banu, among others, participated in the dialogue.
Courtesy: thedailystar.net
