Mohiuddin Alamgir

The ongoing union parishad polls show just how desperate the grassroots Awami League leaders are to go to power or cling to it at the lowest tier of the local government.

Admissions to all government and non-government secondary schools in the coming academic session are likely to be held through a central lottery.

A report last month said nearly eight million students across the country were at risk of learning loss due to the prolonged school closure caused by the pandemic, but the government still appears to be in the dark about the situation on the ground.

Four people, including a woman, were killed and 50 others injured in a clash between two groups of Awami League supporters in Narsingdi yesterday, ahead of the second phase of the union parishad polls on November 11.

The government is planning to expand the vaccination programme for schoolchildren aged between 12 and 17 to six more divisional cities and 14 districts.

Around 7.86 million students were at risk of learning loss as schools remained closed for almost 18 months due to the pandemic, according to a new study.

Private university authorities have yet not been able to finalise when in-person classes will resume because a majority of their students are yet to be vaccinated against Covid-19.

An Election Commission committee is going to place a recommendation of collecting information of students aged above 16 from their educational institutions to provide them with National Identity (NID) cards.

The reopening of educational institutions last month brought a ray of hope to Kaiser Ahmed’s life that was turned upside down in the 18-month-long Covid-19 induced school closure.

After a year and a half, the country’s schools finally reopened, and all students were welcomed back to classrooms on September 12. But according to Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, absenteeism has been growing in secondary schools for the last two weeks.

The secondary education sector is mired by various forms of corruption and irregularities including unauthorised financial transactions in appointing head teachers and assistant teachers.

Although the government said any university or its affiliated colleges could resume in-person classes if all their students completed the Covid-19 vaccine registration by yesterday, more than half the tertiary-level pupils across the country failed to do so within the deadline.

The number of students in classrooms of secondary schools has been dropping since September 12, when the schools reopened after over one and a half years.

With the national elections about two years away, the framing of a specific law as mandated by the constitution for appointments of election commissioners is back to the fore against the backdrop of widespread mistrust in the Election Commission and an alarming apathy among voters.

Many private universities are flouting laws as they are running programmes without any approval and carrying out educational activities on “unauthorised” campuses.

In an ominous sign for democracy, the practice of a candidate being elected unopposed has gripped the parliamentary by-polls as well as local body polls.

Public universities will contact intelligence agencies to know whether the latter have any information regarding possible “anarchy” and “spread of militant propaganda” on the campuses after the reopening of the institutions.

Although the government had planned to resume in-person classes at universities and their affiliated colleges from mid-October after vaccinating all students by September, about 60 percent of the tertiary-level pupils have not even registered for vaccination yet.

The government is planning an overhaul of the education system which, among other changes, will scrap any public exams before class 10 and also ensure no exams of any kind for students up to class 3.

The cadence of children is returning to the classrooms today after 543 days -- a major milestone in the government’s effort to return the country to its pre-pandemic state.