A half of people aged 7 years and above illiterate
Literacy for all remains elusive as at least a half of the people aged seven years and above are still illiterate, according to experts.
People in rural areas lag behind people living in urban areas in literacy rate and so do the females in comparison with the males.
In a faulty primary education system, the government and most of the non-governmental organisations are just chalking up the number of ‘literate’ people without improving the quality and effectiveness of literacy, they said.
‘The rate of literacy has remained stagnant at 49 to 50 per cent as the primary education system is mismanaged and faulty,’ Professor M Siddiqur Rahman of the Institute of Education and Research in Dhaka University told New Age on Tuesday.
People here generally become literate with government-run formal primary schools, he said. ‘The enrolment there is increasing. But the literacy rate is not increasing as the number of dropouts is also on the increase.’
NGO-run non-formal schools, he said, are expected to play a significant role in making people literate. ‘But most of such non-formal schools show a higher number of students on the records than the number of students they teach,’ he said.
Most of the dropouts, in both formal and non-formal schools, generally fail to recall what they have learnt in schools if the remain out of schools for four to five years.
Literacy rate in the people aged seven years and above was 48.5 per cent in 2008, according to the Education Watch Report 2008, published by the Campaign for Popular Education, a coalition of NGOs working on primary education.
The CAMPE conducted its surveys based on a definition of literacy as the ability to write a letter. The literacy rate in the adults, 15 years and above, was 52.1 per cent in 2008.
About 23.5 per cent rural and 10.6 per cent urban households had no literate persons, the report said.
The government-run Bangladesh Bureau of statistics, however, claimed literacy rate in people aged seven years and above is 56 per cent, according to the Statistical Pocketbook 2009, published by the bureau.
About 48 per cent rural and 33 per cent urban people are still illiterate, according to the BBS statistics. About 41.6 per cent of the males and 47.3 per cent of the females are also illiterate.
A consistent 20-22 percentage point gap between urban and rural areas has been noticed in the literacy rates throughout the decade. On the other hand, gender gap reduced over time.
Of the 27 competencies tested, students on an average attained 16.1 competencies in 1998 which went up to 18.7 in 2008.
CAMPE’s executive director Rasheda K Chowdhury said there was ‘hardly any difference between the Education Watch and BBS statistics on the literacy situation.’
The literacy situation has been changing very slowly for several years, she told New Age on Sunday evening.
Article 17 of the constitution stipulated that the state will take up effective measure to remove illiteracy, establish a uniform, mass-oriented and universal system of education, extending free and compulsory education to the needs of society and procure properly trained and motivated citizens.
In its 2008 election manifesto, the Awami League pledged to ensure full enrolment in primary education by 2010 and to eliminate literacy by 2014.
Professor M Siddiqur Rahman said the authorities concerned needed to understand that attaining literacy was ‘not mere counting heads of persons enrolled in schools.’
Most of the government authorities and non-governmental organisations are ‘just counting heads’ without ensuring quality basic literacy and developing skills, abilities and effectiveness, he said.
Experts said the government needed to focus on containing dropout rates, especially of female students, and ensure completion of the full learning cycle for attaining quality basic inclusive literacy for all, irrespective of gender and economic and social status.
Inclusive literacy needs to be responsive to the unique and special needs to help people set within a lifelong learning framework that provides opportunities and pathways from basic literacy to ongoing learning, they said.
They stressed the need for effective measures to create access to quality basic literacy which should include employment of quality teachers, appropriate curriculum and development of modern teaching methods and effective process for teachers’ training.
Rasheda said the local government bodies need to be invested with the responsibilities to oversee the literacy programmes.
The government and several NGOs have taken up programmes to observe International Literacy Day as elsewhere today.
The government has taken programmes to make 38 million illiterate people literate by 2014.
The state minister for primary and mass education, M Motahar Hossain, said the government was working out an action plan to start the literacy programme next year involving all to attain the goal.
‘We can certainly achieve the goal by this time as few other countries have done it within a short time,’ he said.
