Continuous syllabus and assessment changes, as well as experiments on young children, make them guinea pigs. The authorities continue doing so, ignoring the children’s physical and mental pains. It has been learned that the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education has directed the NCTB to revise the assessment system and distribution of marks.
Do they really have the right to change the curriculum whenever they want? In the new direction, written and viva-voce tests have been included in classes one and two. In classes three and four, the number of written tests has been reduced, while viva voce or practical examinations have been retained in all subjects.
These changes will be applied to 20 million 5 lakh pupils of 1 lakh 18 thousand 607 primary schools since January 2026. What is actually happening in the name of giving education to the children?
Our real problems lie with ineffective classroom teaching, coaching, and forced coaching, dependence on low-quality guides and notebooks, students’ absenteeism, and inattentiveness to learning something new. However, nobody tries to bring about changes in these areas to give real education to the children.
Turning a deaf ear to all these, the authorities seem to be busy with assessment. Whose assessment? What assessment? Why assessment? What will we assess when 76% of students cannot even read the text?
After independence, we have changed our curriculum seven times from 1977 to 2023. It appears that we are one of the most developed countries, and our progress has kept pace with the latest developments in science and technology.
Literally, these changes have been made with the motive of politics and financial gain, while disregarding reasonable thoughts on education, all without proper understanding. The authorities often refer to examples of developed countries when changing curricula.
Developed countries modify their curriculum according to their needs, a process that occurs partially, gradually, and on a need-based basis. They do not adopt the approach of simply replicating what we have been doing in the name of a ‘competency-based’ curriculum.
Without showing any competency, they upset everything; however, nothing could be placed systematically, and the people involved in the process of unreasonable change need to be held accountable.
During the reign of previous autocratic government ignoring all sorts of public opinion, teachers and guardians appeal, education experts’ advice and innumerous articles and reports of different newspapers, the education authorities with manifold interest wanted to implement so-called ‘competency based curriculum’ at the cost of millions of students’ academic and psychological loss, uncertainly among the guardians and teachers and definitely a massive amount of public money.
The followers of these individuals still cling to the chairs of education departments, which attempt to implement the same thing in different ways under the guise of benevolent educators for the country. We request that these people stop playing the same game that we have witnessed over the past sixteen years, with no good or positive intention except for making money and materialising the ‘nefarious design’ of some vested interest group.
We are deeply concerned that genuine teaching and learning have been replaced by a focus on superficiality in the classroom, as well as throughout the entire educational landscape. Teachers are busy with private tuition, boards are busy with ensuring students pass their examinations, and students are busy obtaining certificates without attending classes, undergoing assessments, or learning anything. All these deep and dangerous diseases must be treated with an expert hand, genuinely and with a patriotic feeling. Closing one’s eyes to these phenomena, what the authorities try to do establishes no connection with them.
Our curriculum has undergone a 5-10 per cent change from the existing one, which sounds reasonable, as changing this portion can be manageable. However, taking steps to change the entire thing out of emotion and political bias, for other purposes, does not sound reasonable at all.
We cannot afford to change the entire scenario, and pupils and teachers also cannot digest it as it happened while implementing the ‘competency-based curriculum’. They upset everything but could not set it correctly, even by one per cent, creating unlimited chaos in the arena of education.
In 2012, the curriculum underwent a significant change, known as the ‘creative system’, marking the sixth time. Ten to fifteen per cent of teachers could understand the creative curriculum, as they were unable to formulate any questions of their own, let alone create new questions and teaching methods.
The vacuum was filled with low-quality notes and guidebooks that flooded the market, and teachers used to teach students and create questions based on those sources. Students did not understand anything except memorising or preparing questions, either from private tutors or from notes and guidebooks. Their natural creative faculty was thus killed and broken, making them crippled in this regard in the name of a creative curriculum.
This creatively designed ‘creative system’ faced a fiasco that was followed by a competency-based curriculum in 2021, nine years later, which also drew massive criticism from multiple sides. In that curriculum, among many irregularities, one of the most significant issues was the removal of the written test from the assessment system, purportedly in the name of teaching through fun and games, which created significant confusion and yielded no learning.
The ‘Utopian Idea’ was harboured in the minds of the people of the curriculum that ultimately saw a fiasco. This impractical curriculum, of course, played a part in regime change, as a big portion of the population was dead against it, though the government did not listen to anybody because it was implementing its nefarious design.
We plan to resume that game through the change of assessment in the primary level and marks distribution. They plan to introduce summative assessments in grades one and two starting from January 2026, and in classes three, four, and five, a combination of summative assessments, practical tests, and viva voce tests.
That definitely calls for teachers’ training, and it will not be possible to complete it within four months, which means spending a considerable amount of time without conducting classes regularly, which is primarily necessary. We have long looked forward to the 13th Parliamentary Election and the Ramadan and Eid-ul-Fitr vacation, which lasts for about two months.
It means that only for eight or ten months will students and teachers be available to deal with this changed system of assessment. What is the necessity of it when the interim government has announced to think of the new curriculum for the year 2027?
Moreover, we are going to see a new government, and we hope it will be much more reasonable than the previous ones, thinking pragmatically to introduce changes that take into account all the ills of education and the mistakes and errors committed by the previous government. Instead of giving our thoughts to this aspect, why do our education authorities, particularly the primary ones, want to do something so hastily? Let it remain in place for the new government that will be formed through the 12 February national election.
In classes one and two, 50 per cent is a summative assessment, and 50 per cent is a formative assessment. In classes three, four, and five, there is a 30% formative assessment and a 70% summative assessment. In classes one and two, Bengali, English, and Mathematics will have written tests worth 35, 30, and 40 marks, respectively. For the practical exam, these marks will be 15, 20, and 10, respectively.
In these three subjects, it has been proposed to administer two one-hour written tests and two two-hour oral and practical tests, totalling four hours of exams for such young children. In the existing system, we do not have a four-hour exam, even at the SSC, HSC, and normal graduation levels.
Some courses have four four-hour exams in honours or master’s level, which have been proposed to be done in the primary level, which sounds absurd, as we do not have the right to put so much mental and physical pressure and torture on the students of the primary level.
Students must achieve 40 points to progress to the next higher class. This complex method of assessing young children leaves enough room for teachers to be biased. We have also learnt that the ‘Consultation Committee‘ submitted many recommendations that were not taken into consideration to implement or introduce a different assessment system only for the year 2026, which does not sound reasonable.
The innocent children have been thrust into an uncertain situation in the name of education, with frequent changes to their syllabus and curriculum that they cannot cope with. In four years’, time, the system of evaluation has been changed four times that has seriously confused the teachers and the system of education cannot discover itself in a stable situation.
We respectfully request that you refrain from further development, as sufficient progress has already been made in creating a suitable curriculum, which could cause irreparable harm to the students. Please do not repeat anything of this type in future.
About the Author
Masum Billah works as a President of the English Teachers' Association of Bangladesh (ETAB), Dhaka, Bangladesh. He previously worked as an Education Specialist at BRAC, an international NGO in Bangladesh.
