Manzoor Ahmed

As we step into the second decade of the 21st century and Bangladesh is poised to become a middle-income country, a pertinent question about the education system may be whether the glass is half-full or half-empty.

In 2018, the UN General Assembly proclaimed January 24 as International Day of Education to celebrate the role of education for peace and development.

It was reported in the press that a teacher who topped the list in the primary school teachers’ recruitment examination 12 years ago did not get the job.

Is there a good reason why the school year should begin in the first month of the Christian calendar other than that this is how it was done in the colonial era? In India, school calendar is a state (provincial) matter, but the year mostly begins in June.

Mark Twain reputedly said that God created wars to teach Americans geography. It can be said that God put Donald Trump in the White House to teach America how to protect democracy.

Does Bangladesh education need salvaging? The official narrative is equivocal. Most young children are in primary school. The system has expanded to comprise 40 million students, over 200,000 institutions, and over a million teachers. Girls and boys are equally enrolled in schools, a feat not achieved by many developing countries. We do need to work more on improving quality. So why is the despair?

The end of the pandemic is not quite in sight. Schools have remained closed for a full six months now since March 17.

The decision to recommend by concerned ministries to the government to scrap primary level PEC and junior secondary level JSC exams as reported in the press is welcome news (Daily Star, August 12, 2020).

On June 14, the ministry of education extended school closure, imposed on March 18 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, to August 6. Earlier, the prime minister had said the closure may continue to September.

It is disappointment again for the advocates of education who have been pleading for stronger public commitment to education. The new budget maintains Bangladesh’s record for having one of the lowest allocations in South Asia and among developing countries for education as share of GDP and of the national budget. Moreover, there is no sign of an education rescue and recovery plan to offset the impact of the pandemic.

We have to talk about the post-corona time, even though Bangladesh has not reached the peak in infection and deaths caused by the pandemic.

Four million students of tertiary education in Bangladesh—in over 5,000 institutions including public and private universities, affiliated colleges, and professional institutions—are in shutdown, which will continue until September if the situation does not improve.

Schools throughout the country, with some 3.7 million students and over a million teachers, are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The ongoing shutdown is likely to continue beyond the approaching Ramadan until the end of May. So what can we say about the millions of students, their learning and their wellbeing?

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has struck a bold and inspirational note, as the leader of the nation must, in her impromptu remarks on March 29 while receiving contributions to the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund to support the fight against the covid-19 pandemic.

In an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus infection, all educational institutions were ordered shut from March 18 to 31. Now it has been extended to April 9;

The first election of the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (Ducsu) in 28 years was held on March 11, 2019. Nearly 40,000 students were registered as voters.

The poverty rate in Bangladesh in the fiscal year 2018-19 was 20.5 percent, announced Planning Minister MA Mannan on December 16, citing the latest projection of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina recently said, “It is not only Bangladesh, the whole world will need skilled manpower… and for that we have reformed our education system, giving priority to vocational training.

Newspaper headlines and photos on January 1 displayed jubilant children with new textbooks distributed to schools around the country as a new year’s gift.

Nero fiddles, while Rome burns” is an apt metaphor for the 25th world climate summit, called the Conference of Parties (COP25), which just ended in Madrid. Government representatives from 200 countries ended their meeting, copping out from agreeing on a pathway to implementing the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global warming, carbon emission targets and other related measures.