QOUMI madrassahs running outside any regulatory purview has raised some concern. The proposition prevents the government from ensuring the safety of the students of such institutions, their education and their mental and physical health. Besides, there is the problem of their integration into a productive work force. The concern becomes grave as the number of qoumi madrassahs increases. A 2015 Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics report put the number of qoumi madrassahs at 13,902, with 1,398,252 students studying there. The government is reported not to have had specific data on such institutions. The Wifaqul Madarasil Arabia Bangladesh, one of the six boards for qoumi madrassahs, says that it has about 30,000 institutions affiliated with the board. The qoumi institutions offer education ranging from the primary to the tertiary level. The head of a non-governmental organisation working on education estimates that such institutions, running outside any regulatory framework, accounted for 4–5 per cent of the total educational institutions five years or so ago. But they now account for 10–12 per cent of the total educational institutions. The government has, however, 4,425 ibtedayi madrassahs, offering education from pre-primary to primary levels, and 9,269 secondary to tertiary madrassahs, keeping to 2024 statistics, under its regulation.
Given such a huge number of qoumi institutions, the concern warrants that the government should bring them under a regulatory framework in view of education and their administration. Educationalists and researchers think that the government should integrate qoumi education into general education or at least update the system with general and technical education under a government framework to turn the graduates of such institutions into a productive work force. The government is blamed for not shouldering the responsibility for the care of qoumi students and, thus, denying them the rights laid out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The government has recently taken an initiative to standardise qoumi education but the officials appear uncertain about any time frame for the job. A BRAC University teacher, who says that the number of qoumi students could well account for a quarter of the children of secondary-schooling age, says that a regulatory framework and mechanism should be put in place to develop qoumi education in consultation with the institutions, noting that this is not happening yet as this is considered a sensitive political issue and the government does not appear to be showing much interest in it. He calls for a proper assessment and data analysis to work out any policy on this or have this in discussion.
The government should, therefore, speak to the institutions and work out a framework to govern the education and administration of qoumi institutions in a meaningful way.
