Quality of Primary Education: Survey reveals grim picture

Over 60 percent of the third graders and 70 percent of the fifth graders don't have the proficiency in maths, appropriate for their grades, finds a government assessment depicting a grim picture of the quality of the country's primary education.

Besides, 51 percent of the third graders and 50 percent of the fifth graders lack grade-level competence in Bangla.

The National Student Assessment 2022 by the Directorate of Primary Education and Unicef says students in government and private schools are doing comparatively better than those in madrasas and NGO-run schools.

The students, who read different books as well as textbooks, perform significantly better than others, according to the survey on 25,480 students of class-III and 28,752 students of class-V from 1,483 schools across the country.

The findings were revealed at a discussion at a hotel in Cox's Bazar yesterday.

"The assessment portrays a dismal state of the quality of education. Academics and stakeholders have been talking about the issue for a long time, but nothing has changed," Professor Emeritus Manzoor Ahmed, founding director of the Institute of Educational Development at BRAC University, told The Daily Star.

A lack of proper classroom teaching, high student-teacher ratio, poor student-teacher interaction, inadequate infrastructure, and fund shortage are responsible for this state of primary education, he added.

The assessment shows 12 percent of class-III and 8 percent of class-V students have advanced proficiency in Bangla. In maths, the percentages are 11 percent and 9 percent respectively.

Students in Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions perform better while those in Sylhet continue to underperform.

Children from plain land, coastal areas, and border regions perform better than the ones from near water bodies, remote places and islands.

Mohammad Tariq Ahsan, professor at the Institute of Education and Research, Dhaka University, explains that grade-level competence means a student has learnt the lessons on a topic and is able to apply that knowledge in real life situations.

But as students usually memorise lessons to prepare for exams, they perform poorly in the national assessment in which the questions are focused on competency, says Tariq, also a member of the Curriculum Development and Revision Core Committee.

Students are learning maths, but they do not know how to use that in real life. Once the exams are over, they forget what they learn.

"In many cases, there are so many students in a classroom that a teacher cannot pay attention to individual learners. So, the slow learners get no special care."

Tariq also points out that the teachers don't get pre-service training. In classrooms, the teaching method is "one-way", and the student-teacher interaction is almost non-existent, he adds.

While talking at the programme in Cox's Bazar yesterday, Primary and Mass Education Secretary Farid Ahmed said the findings are similar to those of the National Student Assessment 2017.

"We don't want the same performance. We have to work to get better. We have the opportunity to analyse the findings and address the problems."

He is of the opinion that students in Sylhet do not perform well because of poor attendance, and lack of awareness among parents.

The assessment says specific measures should be adopted for madrasas and the schools in low-performing areas.

It recommends capacity-building programmes to improve student-teacher interaction, safe environment in schools.

Deepa Sankar, chief of education of Unicef Bangladesh and Prinaka Sharma, director of Australian Council for Educational Research, presented the findings at the event in Cox's Bazar.