IYLMA Academy

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TEACHERS
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TASNUHA RABBANI
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BA in English (Major in Linguistics)
North South University
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English Language Teacher
Academia
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Education Consultant
SIP Abacus Plus, Bangladesh
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EXPERTISE:
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
ENGLISH LITERATURE
SPOKEN ENGLISH

Can you tell which cat is different?

Education sector in Bangladesh continues to remain neglected
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by: Shahin Akhter
Senior Staff Correspondent, New Age
https://twitter.com/s_akhter2015
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Learning losses, early marriages, child labour as well as lack of skilled teachers and monitoring remained as major challenges in the education sector throughout 2022, according to educationists and rights activists.
The government, they observed, had taken very few initiatives for the recovery of learning losses accumulated during the Covid pandemic.
Besides, if the culture of not ensuring accountability for the negligence of duties and responsibilities continues, then the country will have to depend on a poorly educated and unskilled generation in future, they added.
Secondary and Higher Education Division secretary Md Abu Bakr Siddique told New Age on December 26 that the learning losses could not be recovered fully as it could not be in other countries across the world.
‘This is like losing something in the sea,’ he said, adding, ‘Our students went through a lot of learning gaps.’
About the quality of teachers, he said that as the overall national quality in all sectors was low teachers alone could not be blamed.
‘Good students often become bad teachers later,’ he said, adding, ‘They take bribe or take up other business [to earn more], which does not reflect that they were good students earlier.’
‘The education sector also receives little investment, Abu Bakr Siddique added.
The country’s education sector has been facing huge challenges since 2020 following the Covid outbreak like elsewhere in the world.
In two spells, the government kept suspended in-person classes in all educational institutions of the country for 18 months between March 17, 2020 and September 11, 2021 and between January 21, 2022 and February 21, 2022.
According to a UNICEF report, Bangladesh has gone through the second-longest closure of schools in the world due to the pandemic.
At least 3.7 crore children in the country underwent disruptions in education thanks to the long closure during the pandemic, the UNICEF revealed on January 24, 2022, putting emphasis on reopening the schools.
According to the Bangladesh Education Statistics 2021 released by the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics, the completion rate of girl students decreased while their dropout rate increased — both by almost 6 per cent — in secondary education in 2021 compared to 2020.
Dropout of girl learners went up, especially at the secondary level, as many girls were married off and a large section of boys were forced to take up work because of the pandemic, said Campaign for Popular Education executive director Rasheda K Choudhury.
Early marriages and early engagement in work are two big challenges in the education sector, she commented.
Dhaka University Institute of Education and Research professor Mohammad Tariq Ahsan told New Age on December 22 that the government had taken few and hardly effective initiatives for the recovery of the learning losses.
In the case of girls, Tariq Ahsan went on to say, many were married off in early ages and in the case of boys many joined work at young ages.
‘No major initiative was taken to bring them back to school,’ he reminded, sounding a warning: ‘We should think about these young people who will one day grow up as unskilled manpower without any intervention now.’
There exists widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of education in Bangladesh characterised by poorly trained teachers and a lack of infrastructure.
In 2022, 2,69,602 students obtained GPA 5 in the Secondary School Certificate and equivalent examinations while there are only 44,670 seats available in the 94 colleges, regarded as top ones, across the country which have decided GPA 5 as the minimum requirement for admission to Class XI.
The ruling Awami League in its 2008 election manifesto had pledged to eradicate illiteracy in the country by 2014.
The current literacy rate in Bangladesh is, however, 75.6 per cent, considered among the people aged 15 years and above.
Meanwhile, the government is scheduled to introduce a new national curriculum from 2023 and, to this end, the education ministry inaugurated a pilot in February 2022 at 51 secondary schools, nine madrassahs and two technical educational institutions.
The primary and mass education ministry has failed to launch such a pilot at the pre-primary and primary levels.
‘At the end of this year [2022], the government has suddenly decided to hold the primary scholarship examinations, which will increase discrimination among the students as only 20 per cent of them will be allowed to sit for this exam,’ Professor Tariq Ahsan further said.
He also mentioned that the recruitment of teachers remained suspended during the pandemic and after that teachers were being hired based on a quick evaluation.
‘Besides, earlier, the primary school teachers received one and a half years of training, but the period was recently reduced to six months,’ he said, adding that it is not acceptable.
Talking about the state of affairs at private educational institutions, he said that the government had no control over these institutions.
‘If, along with the government, parents and local communities monitored the activities in these institutions, then they would have a better accountability,’ he added.
Rasheda K Choudhury, also a former caretaker government adviser, remarked that the situation in the education sector in 2022 was same as 2021.
As an impact of the protracted Covid pandemic, a considerable proportion of girl students dropped out of schools both in 2020 and 2021, particularly at the secondary level, as many girls were married off and many boys from poor households were forced to join the workforce, she said.
‘Early marriage is nothing but violence against women,’ she observed, adding that weak management and lack of transparency and accountability at educational institutions are also major problems.
There is also a crisis of competency among teachers, a problem which has deepened further during the pandemic, she went on to comment.
Rasheda said that she did not see any improvement in the investment in education in the past year.
‘The way the government gave incentives for sectors like business, food security and agriculture was not seen happening for the education sector,’ she said.
She further said that though the education sector saw many plans, like for the recovery of learning losses, these were not implemented nor was there any monitoring towards the implementation of those plans.
Secondary and Higher Education Division secretary Md Abu Bakr Siddique told New Age that the biggest challenge for them in 2022 was the printing of some 35 crore free textbooks for the students for 2023.
‘Following the Russia-Ukraine war, the price of everything went up for which we were not prepared,’ he said, adding, ‘Now we’re baffled.’
He said that the tender process for printing secondary textbooks was carried out before the war broke out, which (the tender process) could not be revised.
The prices of raw materials for the textbooks increased a lot, for which there was delay in the printing of books, the secretary added.
Till December 26, 2022, about 70 per cent of the secondary and about 49 per cent of primary textbooks were printed, he mentioned.

Education sector in Bangladesh continues to remain neglected Learning losses, early marriages, child labour as well as lack of skilled teachers and monitoring remained as major challenges in the education sector throughout 2022,...

TEACHERS
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HOSSAIN KHANDAKER SADIA
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MBA, BBA, B.ED
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7 YEARS OF TEACHING EXPERIENCE IN ENGLISH MEDIUM SCHOOLS
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WORKING FOR
- OXFORD INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL (UTTARA BRANCH)
- EX-ACADEMIA TEACHER (MIRPUR CAMPUS)
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EXPERTISE:
ECONOMICS
BUSINESS STUDIES
COMMERCE

TEACHERS
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PRANTO KUMAR
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5+ YEARS EXPERIENCE
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WORKING FOR
IYLMA ACADEMY
IYLMA INNOVATION LTD.
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WORKED FOR
EZZE TECHNOLOGY LTD.
3HANDS
IOTMDCP LTD.
TRAINER OF LEDP
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EXPERTISE:
WEB DESIGN & WEB DEVELOPMENT (LARAVEL & WORDPRESS)

TEACHERS
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RICHARD MARK LEEN SHAKKHAR
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BBA & DIT (LIMKOKWING UNIVERSITY & MAHSA AVENUE INTERNATIONAL COLLEGE)
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6YRS EXPERIENCE IN TEACHING ENGLISH MEDIUM STUDENTS
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WORKED IN DON BOSCO SCHOOL AND COLLEGE
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PRIVATE TUTOR FOR DPS SCHOLASTICA, KIDS CAMPUS, YALE DON BOSCO AND MASTERMIND
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EXPERTISE:
CHEMISTRY
MATHEMATICS
PURE MATHEMATICS
PHYSICS