Getting out of the poverty trap through education
Students of primary and secondary grades began the new year with sheer happiness on their faces after getting free new textbooks in their hands. The programme initiated by the government since 2010 is surely laudable and this year alone more than 4.26 crore students from Class-I to Class-IX are receiving over 35.21 crore copies of free textbooks. Surely, it's a moment of joy and celebration for them, but one cannot help but wonder whether the joy and happiness will remain once they graduate from primary, secondary and higher secondary schools. Will they have the right skills and ability to compete in the job market; will they be able to get out of poverty with the kind of education they are getting?
Bangladesh has certainly made remarkable progress in expanding primary education, especially when it comes to raising student enrolment and bringing gender parity. But in the recent past, a serious concern was raised that the quality and curriculum of our primary, secondary and higher secondary studies do not effectively serve the goals of human development and poverty eradication. There is a lack of adequate communication and collaboration between the government, academia and industry.
At present, the entire educational system is a victim of a corrupt mindset that is devoting all its energy on securing higher pass rates through an apparent policy of easy marking, while showing less concern with the actual learning outcomes. The discomforting consequence of this is evident when we find that a substantial chunk of skilled jobs in our industries and other economic enterprises are occupied by professionals from neighbouring countries, with India alone claiming nearly USD 4 billion in remittances that flow out of Bangladesh.
This goes to show our inability to provide the necessary educational and skill-enhancing resources to young people for them to prepare themselves for highly skilled jobs within the country. Industry insiders say that besides poor infrastructure, lack of land, acute shortage of power and gas for new industries, finding the right people and getting them to work productively are the biggest problems in Bangladesh today.
Poverty is a complex economic phenomenon. Although dealing with the causes of poverty in Bangladesh is complex, the country has nonetheless shown impressive improvements and resilience over the years. When the Awami League-led government took office in 2009, around 50 million citizens of the country were poor, of which 28.8 million were in the clutches of extreme poverty. Undoubtedly, poverty has reduced in the last 10 years but still the country has 30 million people living below the poverty line—of them, 10 million are extreme poor. The 2018 Awami League election manifesto titled "Bangladesh on March towards Prosperity" said it would increase the GDP growth to 10 percent from 7.8 percent now in the next five years and will bring down the poverty rate to zero from about 22 percent now by 2041.
But one needs to understand that economic growth alone is not always enough to achieve higher levels of human development unless one invests in education, health and social protection. Bangladesh spends only 2 percent of its GDP on education whereas a country with an average income spends about 3.2 percent and high-income countries spend 6 percent on education. Currently there are 1,33,901 government primary schools, Ebtedayee madrasahs and kindergartens across the country. Of them, 7,764 schools had only three teachers; 721 had two and 79 were run by a single teacher. The minimum international standard for teacher-student ratio is 30:1 but in Bangladesh there is one teacher per around 50 students. An internal report of the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) of 2015 states that around 70 percent of children are unable to read or write properly, or perform basic mathematical calculations even after five years at primary school and most of those who graduate from primary schools do not acquire the nationally defined basic competence.
Also there is a gap between the education provided in cities and the education provided in rural areas and as a result, in rural areas many parents are reluctant to send their children to schools because they consider education to be non-beneficial as neither the textbooks nor the curriculum is relevant to their life situation while hours spent at workplace generate income and support the family. Many studies also show that quality of the schools attended for the poor is so appalling that the parents often remove their children from what they correctly see as dead-end or "sink schools".
It has also been observed that the most common teaching methods at secondary classes in the country are lecturing and reading textbooks. And when it comes to interaction, teachers only ask closed "yes" or "no" questions to check whether the students have memorised the textbook information or not. Most teachers feel uncomfortable in adopting innovative educational approaches as they fear that using other approaches may result in poor examination performances. As a result, though the pass rates in public examinations are getting higher, a huge number of students are failing to master the desired competencies due to a flawed teaching system.
Economists have, for a very long time, stressed that education has a significant role to play in poverty reduction in various ways. But faulty, divisive, discriminatory and contradictory education cannot produce good citizens, let alone take the country forward. Therefore, mere access to free primary schooling for poor children is not sufficient to ensure that they will do well enough to be able to compete successfully in today's competitive market. As such, serious attention needs to be given to the quality of mass primary schooling to enable them to break out of the cycle of poverty.
We need to focus on improving the quality of education, the kind of education related to our life and its struggles which make poor children acquire necessary life skills so that they grow up with a truly global outlook and meet all the needs of the jobs of today and tomorrow. What is needed is a strategy of three Es: education, employability and employment. But this doesn't mean we should discard the old disciplines of reading, math, science, history, etc. While mainstream education is crucial and essential, targeted programmes are very much needed, teaching appropriate vocational subjects with the objectives of job creation and poverty reduction can only be realised through applicable education which empowers the products of the education system with skills and competence to become self-employed, so that they can help themselves climb out of poverty.
Abu Afsarul Haider studied economics and business administration at Illinois State University, USA, and is currently involved in international trade in Dhaka.
Email: afsarulhaider@gmail.com
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