Viqarunnisa Noon, the country’s most reputed school, has been given Grade ‘B’ while competitors Motijheel Ideal School and Holy Cross School have been graded ‘A’ in the country’s first-ever school rankings based on overall performance. RAJUK Uttara Model School, BAF Shaheen School, YWCA School, St Joseph’s Higher Secondary School, Shamsul Haque Khan School, Shaheed Bir Uttam Lt. Anwar Girls’ School and Adamjee Cantonment Public School have been placed on the list of ‘A’ graders. The Government Laboratory High School and St Gregory’s High School are graded ‘B’ while Motijheel Government Boys’ High School and Mohammadpur Government High School have been listed in the ‘C’ category.
Professor Noman-Ur-Rashid, director general of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), on Friday told The Independent that the first-ever grading of all secondary schools across the country would be made public at an October 9 function.
Education minister Nurul Islam Nahid is scheduled to announce the list at a programme at the National Academy for Educational Management.
The performance-based rankings are part of the Tk. 800-crore Secondary Education Sector Development Project (SESDP) undertaken by the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE). It covered 17,874 government and non-government secondary schools out of 18,463 institutions in all the 482 upazilas under 64 districts.
The top performing schools have been graded ‘A’, schools performing well have received ‘B’, moderately performing institutions have ranked ‘C’ and schools performing poorly and non-performers have been placed under categories in D and E, respectively.
The list was made on the basis of seven criteria set by the government. They include teaching-learning environment, teachers’ professionalism, students’ performance, institution management committee, leadership of heads of institutions, co-curricular activities and institution-community and guardian-teacher relationships. There are some sub-criteria under the seven main criteria as well. Describing the collection of data for the grading, professor Md. Sirajul Haque, director (planning and development) of DHSE, said: “Heads of all the institutions have filled in the Institutional Self Assessment Summary (ISAS) 2011 form and a panel has made the summary and data analysis.
“Such grading of secondary schools, prepared on the basis of overall performance, is a first for Bangladesh. We will prepare and make public the grading every year,” he said, adding, “Our aim is to help institutions improve their performance.”
An education ministry official said on Thursday that the department had a meeting before preparing the report, which put Viqarunnisa in the ‘B’ category and most of the government schools either in the ‘B’ or ‘C’ category.
The ministry officials have been asked to re-check the summary report before making it public.
“The academic background and performance of teachers, activities of school management committee, lack of requisite space for the huge number of students are some of the reasons responsible for Viqarunnisa getting Grade B,” pointed out the official. According to the list, Motijheel Government Girls’ High School, Dhanmondi Government Girls’ High School, Gonobhaban Government Girls’ High School, Sher-e-Banglanagar Government Girls’ High School and National Bank Public School have earned Grade ‘B’ while Motijheel Model (morning shift) High School and Kakoli High School in Dhanmondi have been given Grade ‘A’.
-With The Independent input
