“Who will pick up the duck’s photo?” The moment Rafia Sonamoni posed the question to a group of 26 children, four eager hands shot up, accompanied by excited shouts of, “I will!”
The government committee on primary education is set to recommend a classroom size of 30 so that teachers can give extra attention to weaker students to help with their learning.
To serve the purpose of education, meeting the parents' demands through focusing on learning outcomes and reforming the education system are the need of the hour.
The new norm for education should be people before profit, not the other way around.
Government has to look into the decline of students
It is believed that education, in the midst of global advances and challenges, remains the critical vehicle of empowerment.
The government has made a fresh move to extend primary education up to class-VIII, six years after missing the original deadline set in the National Education Policy.
The enchantment of statistics should not blind us to the sobering truth.
At least 18,465 non-government primary schools closed their doors for good in 2021 and 2022 due to what officials said were the impacts of Covid-19 pandemic.
Today, 99 percent of Bangladesh's girls and 97 percent of boys are enrolled in primary school.
Each six-year-old child would be admitted to a neighbourhood primary school without being subjected to a qualifying test – this is how it should work because the country has a mandatory education law in place since 1990. But it hardly works this way.
A report published in this daily yesterday revealed the awful conditions of Islamia UP Government Primary School in Sutrapur of Old Dhaka. Four other schools in the same area are in no better state.
The primary education authorities – especially the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MoPME) – must be busily preparing for the Primary Education Completion Examination (PECE) or Shomaponi to be held in November.
In an exclusive interview with The Daily Star, Robert D. Watkins, UN Resident Coordinator and UNDP Resident Representative in Bangladesh talks to Amitava Kar about some development ideas for Bangladesh.
