Introduction
Notably, education is one of the factors that determine the standard of living in the world today. Education is merely the passing of skills, knowledge, and information to student by their teachers. It affects different aspects of human life, namely political, social, and economical. Education trains people to explore their potentials to optimum level regardless of gender, race nationality, or background. Certainly, education is an important and lucrative form of human capital that helps in furthering economic escalation as well as improving general productivity of a nation. In Bangladesh education is poorly developed. Furthermore, the rate of literacy is at its minimal, with significant disparity between male and female literacy level. In the recent years the level of illiteracy has been reducing tremendously, for example in the year 1998 Bangladesh received International Literacy award from UNESCO. It is assumed that by the year 2005 Bangladesh will be illiteracy-free. In fact the girl child has overtaken the boy child in education.
In Bangladesh, the education systems comprises of four systems running independently: private schools, government schools, NGOs run schools as well as Madras’s. In all this system the government serves majority of the students. Based on 2001 Education watch statistics, access to education has been at an increase for the last twenty years. This is so because gender equity and enrollment rates have increased, decline in school dropouts, and proper management of education.
Problems facing education in Bangladesh
Education in Bangladesh has faced a lot of challenges. This barriers has rendered accessibility of education different, especially to those students who come from poor families. Facilities in schools are not to standard. Despite the fact that government schools have put more focus on improveing and installing new facilities, most of the classrooms are not safe and clean. They lack basic needs such as working toilets, textbooks, and blackboards (Chowdhury 48).
The government of Bangladesh has put more concentration on urban schools, resulting to poor educational access in the country. Furthermore, the infrustural facilities such as roads are very poor. Hence, it is difficult to facilitate education in the country site. Additionally, there are no schools in the urban periphery there are no schools (Chowdhury 54).
Access to education is very difficult in the rural areas. Many of the schools in the rural are far, overcrowded and above all insecure. Therefore, the parents protect their children especially girls, rather than allowing them to travel for long distance to attend schools. Lack of food also is a challenge to many students.
The quality of training in which teachers attend is very poor. Teachers don’t use what they learn from PTI (Primary teacher institute) and BRAC (Chowdhury 70). For example, we find that there are some teachers who are well conversant with teaching Quran, yet in schools they go ahead and teach sciences. There is also poor supervision and interaction between teachers and students.
Perhaps, most of the teachers use a lot of money to secure a job. But as they secure a job, the amount of salary they receive is very low. This rate of payment reduces the morale of teachers in teaching. Statistically, approximately 40,000 teachers are needed every year to replace those who die, retire, and change to other jobs. This number cannot be achieved, leading to shortage of teachers in schools.
Arguably, class sizes as well as attendance is not to proportional. Government schools rarely prioritise the ratios. In most cases, teacher to student ratios are very high as 1: 60.The capacity of the classrooms and seats do not accommodate all the students. In fact overcrowding in classrooms is among the reasons why students don’t attend school (Sharafuddin).
The government has put in place poor curriculum called Rote-learning. The materials used in schools are very irrelevant in the lives of people. The curiculum too does not give room for other extracurricular activities. Students are given a lot of homework which they cannot complete, leading to school dropout, frustrations, and failure.
Solutions to the problems
Possibly, the lasting solution to all these problems should come from the government. This is because the government has information required to plan on the education system. The government should ensure that they build infrastructures in the country. This includes roads, hospitals, and schools. This will lead to easy access of schools and decrease in congestion in classrooms (Shahidur 32)
The government should help in supporting NGO in the running of schools in the rural areas. This can be done through provision incentives to the people in rural areas, improving teacher training facilities, as well as adjusting the curriculum. The curriculum should be flexible to give students time to help their parents (Chowdhury 84).
The government and NGO should manage well the funds provided by the World Bank in promoting investments in the education sector. Additionally, some agencies have come to the rescue of education this include FSSAP (Female Secondary School Assistance Project) and GEP (General Education Project). As far as education is concern, religion and politics should not affect the progressive steps of improving education.
Work Cited.
Chowdhury, M. Renewed Hope, Daunting Challenges: State of Primary Education in
Bangladesh. Dhaka: University Press Limited, 2002.
Shahidur, R. Education Achievements, and School Efficiency in Rural Bangladesh. New York:
World bank.32
Sharafuddin, A.M. Innovations in Primary Education in Bangladesh. From website: Retrieved
On 10/10/2011
