This year's results of the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) and equivalent examinations have, for good reasons, caused quite a hullabaloo. That the pass rate is the lowest ever in the past 19 years is unsettling enough. But when more than half of the successful examinees score below grade point average (GPA) 3.0, the weakness and fallibility of the education system get exposed to a limitless extent. The number of GPA 5 achievers has dropped, the educational institutions with zero pass have more than doubled to 312 within a year and more worryingly those located in rural areas have fared worse.
The education minister's explanation that genuine evaluation of examination scripts is primarily responsible for the result reversal falls short of diagnosing the real malaise. This batch of SSC examinees and a few of the preceding and following batches had their foundational education seriously disrupted due to the Covid-19 epidemic. The policymakers failed to address the learning deficiency of young learners. Instead, easy ways out like auto pass, examinations on truncated syllabuses, marks calculated proportionately in subjects examinees never appeared for exams and generous awarding of marks were followed to maintain continuity of different tiers of education.
Moreover, experiments with the education system and question papers have been made several times. The Awami League government introduced a competency-based school curriculum in 2023 but a year after the interim government reverted to the old curricula. Education in this process has been turned into a plaything. Students from poor families could not adjust to such frequent changes in education curricula and syllabuses. In fact, village schools were the worst sufferers because, with rare exceptions, they have not qualified teachers nor their students can avail of coaching centres' recipes for obtaining marks.
In fact, the current generations of learners have to navigate a turbulent time because of capricious and abrupt policy changes. After 55 years of independence, this nation is yet to put in place a stable and advanced education curriculum. When there was a need for prioritising education and making available the required fund for that, successive governments have faltered. Absence of competent English and Mathematics teachers in the majority of village schools is no new development. It has persisted since long. Teaching profession at the secondary level in general is neither lucrative nor financially rewarding. Qualified teachers migrate to cities en masse because there are opportunities for them to earn many times more money from private tuition and coaching centres than their salaries. Thus village schools have been deprived of quality teaching.
In the process, education has been commercialised to such an extent that classroom teaching has been reduced to a nominal exercise with greater emphasis on private tuition and an extensive and pervasive coaching system. Unfortunately, students from village schools, particularly those from poor and marginal families, do not have the opportunity to receive such guidance. They have to depend on guide, note and 'made easy' books, provided their parents can afford those much maligned supportive accessories.
With foundational learning deficiency, students from disadvantaged background lose interest in studies and fail to master subjects like English and Mathematics. Also many non-government schools under the government's monthly pay order (MPO) system do not have required infrastructure and adequate teaching staff. As many as 77,000 positions of teachers in MPO-listed secondary schools and madrashas remain vacant. Besides, 13,500 positions of principals, headmasters and assistant headmasters are reportedly yet to be filled. Without addressing these endemic problems, it is futile to expect better outcomes from such institutions.
A lack of physical infrastructure including skeleton staff and administrative setup not only hampers daily routine but also acts as a psychological barrier for both students and teachers. This also reflects glaring social discriminations. However, there are exceptional cases where 12 examinees were supervised by 12 teachers and examinees were outnumbered by teachers and still not a single examinee passed from those institutions. This is baffling and demands a thorough inspection.
Apart from tangible paucity of infrastructure and staff shortage, the intangible inadequacy, often missed, needs to be brought under closer scrutiny. One of these is the quality of teachers and the teacher-student equation that has taken a sharp turn for worse since the rise of mobocracy. Indeed, financially not rewarding teaching profession once commanded respect. That venerable position has been seriously compromised with unceremonious ouster of teachers from educational institutions. Many of those teachers were dragged out and physically assaulted before their expulsion. Dignity and esteem, thus shattered, have made fellow teachers to maintain a distance from closer involvement with their charges and do just routine duty.
Tangible deficiency can be made up for but intangible wound or shortage can hardly be overcome. Unless teachers feel their service is important and is recognised so by society, they cannot concentrate on their role as friends, philosophers and guides. The important thing is not only to make teaching profession financially rewarding but also to restore dignity and appreciation they deserve. Educational institutions should be free from sectarian politics and the profession must be attractive to well qualified people, not to those who were unqualified for other government and private services. This is exactly how today's teaching incompetence can be transitioned gradually to highly efficient teaching regime. There is a need for education reform but it should be done with a panel of highly reputed educationists with no partisan political affiliation. Instead of ad-hoc experiments with education, an advanced and relevant system matching the global standard has to be introduced. It may take time but this is worth waiting for.
