Rediff On The NeT: The Bangladesh government's strategy of giving students a say in how and what they should be taught is producing encouraging results.

Giving children a say in their education

Three years away from its goal to bring primary education to every nook and corner of the country, the Bangladesh government's strategy of giving students a say in how and what they should be taught is producing encouraging results.

Tired of telling rural communities what it thinks is best for them, the government had launched a new project -- the Intensive District Approach to Education for All -- in 1995. The project provided for deciding what should be taught at the primary level in consultation with parents, village elders and the students themselves. It was introduced by the government's mass education department in 2,800 schools -- all of which are now producing amazing results.

Besides a high enrollment rate, dropout rates, which have in the past consistently frustrated every government effort to increase the rate of literacy, have sharply fallen in all the schools.

Also, interestingly for the civil rights advocates, the children are exercising their right to decide what and how they should be taught -- a right enshrined in the United Nations Rights of the Child convention, which Bangladesh was among the first to ratify in 1990.

''One has to see to believe how enthusiastically people are embracing the ideal school concept. Everyone is cooperating in running these schools,'' says Selim Ahmed, a UN Children's Fund programme officer.

One of the world's poorest countries, Bangladesh has a serious literacy problem -- of the 120 million population, only 32 per cent of its men and 26 per cent of its women can read and write.

Though there is at least a school in nearly every village and the enrollment rates are quite high (92 per cent enrolled in 1996), the dropouts rates have always been alarming. Of the five children who join primary school only one reaches the fifth grade.

Government officials are now banking on the new project, which will be introduced in all public primary schools shortly, to achieve their literacy targets. "By involving the local people in the project, we have ensured that parents also share the responsibility for its success," an education officer pointed out.

The government has now redrawn its goals for education to be met by the year 2000. Besides raising the enrollment rate in primary schools to 95 per cent, it envisages a retention rate of at least 70 per cent.

Another goal is to raise the quality of education -- a new primary school curriculum was introduced nationwide between 1992 and 1996 -- and to ensure an increase in the number of girls finishing school. For this, the government has reserved 60 per cent of the teaching jobs for women.

"Gender disparity in primary school enrollment has virtually disappeared,'' an education report, submitted to the committee monitoring the implementation of the Child Rights Convention which will meet in Geneva early next week, says.

From a ratio of 34 girls to 66 boys in 1980, enrollment in primary schools rose to 50 girls for every 51 boys in 1994. But with only one-third of primary graduates entering secondary school, only one of three enrolled are girls. Girls are discriminated against in Bangladesh, and are the first ones to be pulled out from school in times of a family crisis.

A 1994 study by the UNICEF and UNESCO found that besides a high teacher-student ratio in schools, most lacked basic facilities like toilets. The government plans to remedy this with financial aid from UNICEF. Part of the $ 72 million which has been granted for the new school project will go to build toilets, renovate buildings, and put blackboards in every classroom.

Primary school education was made compulsory in Bangladesh in 1993. Text books are free, and in some schools, free writing materials are also distributed. For girls, the government has waived the fees for the first two years of secondary school. Further, they are paid a monthly stipend during grades six to ten.

Compared to some of its neighbours, Bangladesh's education policies are radical and progressive. For its 11-month-old government under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed wiping out illiteracy is very high on the agenda. ''We shall not be able to step into the 21st century with confidence if we fail to equip ourselves as an educated nation,'' she said.

As of now, human development in Bangladesh is the lowest in south Asia. It spends only five dollars a year per person on education and health, in contrast to Pakistan's 10, India's 14, and Malaysia's 150 dollars.

Roughly 80 per cent of Bangladesh's development expenditure has been financed by foreign donors. Education has been a major beneficiary, but traditional teaching practices and a curriculum that did not provide for any vocational skills had, till now, thwarted its attempts to rise out of the illiteracy trap.

UNI

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