Govt urged to regulate teachers\u2019 salaries at pvt schools<\/strong>
\nThe government should set a binding guideline on the salaries for teachers at privately-run schools and colleges which pay a lower amount to teachers but charge students high tuition fees, experts said.
\nThey said that low salaries were resulting in a reduction in the quality of teachers and education as well in these educational institutions.
\n\u2018A rickshaw puller even earns more than some teachers in some kindergarten schools,\u2019 said a teacher at Paradise International School at Mirpur in Dhaka.
\nThe complaints of low salaries at private educational institutions came after the High Court earlier this month had asked the government to explain why it should not take action against the schools which raised fees beyond the permissible limits.
\nWhile teachers of the schools, which receive a portion of their funds under the government\u2019s monthly pay order scheme, get a better pay, teachers at privately-run educational institutions receive much less.
\n\u2018It is absolutely unfair on the part of the school managements that they pay a teacher Tk 2,000 or Tk 5,000 as salary. How can a person teach in the classroom if he lives on such a low pay,\u2019 said Dhaka University professor emeritus Serajul Islam Choudhury.
\n\u2018The schools and colleges which pay their teachers such low salaries cannot ensure quality education. How can these schools expect to have good teachers if they do not offer good salaries.\u2019
\nHe urged the government to formulate a regulation on salaries of teachers in private schools.
\nEducationist Emazuddin Ahmed said that private schools and colleges did not have quality teachers simply because they did not offer good salaries. \u2018A skilled teacher must be paid good salary,\u2019 he said.
\n\u2018The school managements are engaged in such practices because they want to make big profits; they run the institutions for commercial purposes,\u2019 he added.
\nSiddiqur Rahman, professor of Dhaka University\u2019s Institute of Education and Research, said, \u2018Some university graduates may take up the profession of teaching for some time but quit it as soon as they get a better paid job,\u2019 he said.
\nHe said that only a few private schools and colleges provide quality education while most of them were established simply for commercial purposes.
\nSalma Akhter, another professor at the Institute of Education and Research, said that the government should set guidelines on the salaries teachers at different levels in those institutions should receive.
\n\u2018Salaries vary at private schools depending on their successes. While some schools pay a good salary, most of them offer a low salary structure,\u2019 she said.
\nShe said that not only should private schools be regulated but the government should have a department to monitor whether they are going by the regulations.
\n\u2018In most of the countries in the world, though private schools enjoy freedom, they have to follow some kind of regulations. But in Bangladesh, in some cases, they can do whatever they wish to,\u2019 she said.
\nTeachers claim that school authorities are making huge profits by charging students high tuition fees while at the same time paying teachers low salaries.
\n\u2018The gap between the salaries of the teachers and the profit these institutions make is huge,\u2019 said a teacher of an English medium school in the city\u2019s Dhanmondi area.
\nA teacher in the college section of the Northern University Laboratory School and College at Jatrabari gets Tk 7,000 as a monthly salary while in the school section the salary is even lower ranging between Tk 3,000 and Tk 5,500.
\nThe college charges students Tk 500 to Tk 600 per month as the tuition fee.
\nHowever, the college principal Abdul Hannan said that he did not think teachers\u2019 salaries at the college were low.
\n\u2018The college is counting losses and if the salaries were hiked, the amount of loss would increase,\u2019 he said.
\n\u2018I would ask you to sit with my accountant and you will find that we are not making profit,\u2019 he said.
\nIn the Mirpur branch of MABS International School, teachers receive Tk 4,000 to Tk 5,000 as a monthly salary, with students being charged Tk 700 to Tk 900 as the monthly tuition fee.
\nThe superintendent of the school, Mezanur Alam, told New Age that the school was incurring a loss so they could not pay teachers any higher salary.
\nWhen asked whether it was possible to get quality teachers with this low salary structure, he said, \u2018We try to manage good teachers within this limitation.\u2019
\nIn Cherry Blossoms International School, a junior teacher gets Tk 10,000 as monthly salary, with the school charging Tk 2,700 as the tuition fee.
\nShaleha Kader, the principal of the school, said that the salary paid to teachers in her school was not low compared to other schools.
\n\u2018It is not possible for us to increase the salaries considering the tuition fees we receive from students,\u2019 she said.
\nThere are some kindergartens in the city where teachers get as low as Tk 1,500 to Tk 2,000 as monthly salaries.
\nEducation secretary Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury said that if the government received specific allegations from the teachers, it would take steps against the school authorities.
\n\u2018Why should the schools pay teachers a low salary when they are charging a high tuition fees from the students,\u2019 he said.
\nHe, however, said government had no plan at the moment to formulate a regulation for the salary of the teachers of these schools.<\/p>\n

Courtesy of New Age<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Govt urged to regulate teachers\u2019 salaries at pvt schools The government should set a binding guideline on the salaries for teachers at privately-run schools and colleges which pay a lower amount to teachers but charge students high tuition fees, experts said. They said that low salaries were resulting in a reduction in the quality of … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[209,199,7730,7729,7728],"yoast_head":"\n