The government revived a project, after 18 months, to transform 306 non government secondary schools in as many upazila headquarters into ‘model schools’ to reduce the growing gap in the standard of education between urban and rural areas, said officials.
The project, they said, would transform a non government school in each of the 306 upazilas having no government schools into standard schools, by appointing quality teachers and improving their infrastructure including the needed labs.
The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, the implementation agency, has initiated the process to transform 100 existing schools in the current fiscal year.
The project for transforming the schools at an estimated cost of Tk 465.77 crore, he said, was planned to be completed by December 2013.
The basic objective, he said, would be to curb the differences in the standard between schooling in rural and the urban areas.
The project director, KM Rafiqul Islam, said that the directorate had selected the schools for upgrading, taking into consideration their reputation, geographical location, performance and the quality of school management committee.
The government, he said, sanctioned Tk 20 crore in the current year’s annual development programme.
He expressed the hope that more funds would be given to the project when the ADP would be revised.
The project, he said, envisaged setting up of no new schools.
In August 2007, the education ministry took the decision to upgrade 306 schools in the upazila headquarters.
The government discontinued the project in May 2009 following allegations of corruption in the selection of 17 schools for upgrading.
The DSHE officials said the government revived the project to minimise the growing disparities between the urban and rural schools and reduce the pressure of admission on ‘reputed’ schools outside upazilas.
The project envisages creation of needed physical facilities like school buildings, science, computer and language laboratories and libraries, appointment of additional teachers, subject-wise training of teachers, teacher learning aids and other amenities, they said.
New teachers would be appointed, said the project director, to minimise teacher-student ratio to 1:40 in the model schools.
Nine resource centres would be established in as many regions to provide training to teachers, he said.
