About four in five students, which accounts 80 per cent, of the national minority children dropout of primary education mainly because of linguistic problems and discriminatory behaviours, researches and experts said.
The national drop-out rate in primary education is 45, according to the Bangladesh Primary Education Annual Sector Performance Report 2009.
They also said that poverty and the absence of an academic calendar, worked out in view of jum (shifting) cultivation, were also reasons for such a huge rate of drop-out.
A 2011 study titled ‘Food Poverty and Consequent Vulnerability of Children: A Comparative Study of Ethnic Minorities and Monga-Affected Households in Bangladesh’ shows that 55.2 per cent of the national minorities living in the Chittagong Hill Tracts have no schooling.
The primary and mass education minister, Afsarul Ameen, on September 21, however, said that the net primary education enrolment was now 99.47 per cent across the country.
A ‘significant number’ of national minority children drop out of schools because of the absence of multilingual education system, said another report titled ‘Study on different issues in national policies and acts causing hindrance to primary education of the indigenous people in the CHT’ conducted by Manusher Jonno Foundation.
‘During the survey, 70 per cent of the respondent teachers said that they faced difficulty in explaining the text of the books to the students because of the language barriers as most of the students do not speak or understand Bangla,’ MJF programme manager Tandra Chakma said.
Tandra told New Age that the government had taken no steps to address the problem of language in the education of national minorities although the Chittagong Hill Tracts Accord 1997 and the National Education Policy 2010 contain provisions for addressing the language problem in teaching.
In addition to the two policies that provision for measures to contain the drop-out of national minority children, the election manifesto of the ruling Awami League also pledged to address the issue.
About 72 per cent of the teachers in the CHT use Bangla in classroom teaching while only 15 per cent of the teachers also use the languages of the students in classrooms addition to explaining the subjects in Bangla when the students could not follow the teachers.
Some 13 per cent of the teachers use two languages, Bangla and the languages of the students, to explain the text of books in classrooms, the MJF study said.
Saikat Biswas, project officer of Oxfam GB, told New Age that national minorities living in the plain land were comparatively poor. Up to 60 per cent of such people could afford to send their children to primary school.
Eighty per cent of these children drop out in 4 to 6 months as they fail to follow classroom teaching because of the language barrier.
Discrimination against national minority children in schools in the plain land such as not being allowed to sit on the same bench with the students who are not from national minority families, being forced to sit on the floor or even not being allowed to drink from the same tube well or water outlet and to use the same glass also contribute significantly to the drop-out rate, Saikat said.
Rasheda K Choudhury, a former adviser to the caretaker government, told New Age that discrimination against national minority children in schools should be addressed soon. The administration that monitors the education system also needs to eliminate such discrimination.
Rasheda, who is also executive director of the Campaign for Popular Education, said, ‘The government needs to intervene in such behaviour towards indigenous people. Building awareness is a must. The government needs to introduce a specific curriculum in the Primary Teachers’ Training Institutes to eliminate such discrimination. This will also lead the teachers not to behave in such a manner.’
Rasheda said that the government has the good will to introduce multilingual education for national minority children as it inserted a provision in the National Education Policy for doing so. ‘It is now time to implement what is on paper.’
She said that as the government has no experience of running multilingual education, it could take help of the non-governmental organisations working in the field to work out an action plan.
The state minister for primary and mass education, M. Motahar Hossain, told New Age that the ministry had no plans to introduce multilingual education system although the National Curriculum and Textbook Board had held several meetings on the issue.
‘We are concerned about the problem and I hope that the ministry will soon introduce such an education system.’ Motahar said.
As for discrimination, the minister said that the administration would look into the matter seriously if it received any complaints of such discrimination.
-With New Age input
