Is it rational to establish 600 Model Schools and Colleges? Whenever any government assumes office, it wants to do something exceptional in established fields without giving a second thought to whether those fields really need the changes the government is planning, ignoring the long-standing, must-be-solved problems of those areas.
That is why the exceptional thoughts sometimes appear as absurd. Some impractical proposals raise questions about whether the decision-makers are doing so out of overexcitement or because they are guided by something else. It is learnt from the media that the government plans to establish 600 Model Schools and Colleges across the country to provide quality education to students in backward areas.
Establishing 600 Model Schools and Colleges sounds good in theory, but does it work in practice? They add that these institutions will serve as ‘Centres of Excellence’ to provide high-quality education to talented children from low- and limited-income families. Can this lame argument really satisfy us?
We fail to think that the country is losing arable land due to industrialisation, human habitation, expansion of markets and other social institutions with the increase of population, as well as people’s ‘increasing income that influences them to establish separate and sophisticated houses, killing the fertile and agricultural land around the country, ultimately squeezing our cultivable land and influencing climate change indirectly.
It is really difficult to preserve our arable land due to both controlled and uncontrolled aggression. We think the leaders of the country, in general, and particularly those in power, need to pay genuine attention to all the country’s serious concerns and matters. Establishing 600 Model Schools and Colleges, each on three acres of land, would mean a huge amount of land would be utilised for that purpose. Does it mean providing proper education to children?
There are many institutions in the country, both in the government and private sectors, with a significant amount of land lying unused. It is the ministry’s responsibility to identify underutilised land to accommodate additional departments and expand student and teacher facilities. That should be the ministry’s and government’s concern.
When new 600 Model Schools and Colleges are established, what will happen to the old institutions? Can we really afford to implement the project for 68,442 crore taka?
This year, about half of the HSC candidates did not sit for the exam. We will never try to learn the causes, as we don’t think it is an educational problem. The teachers here may be capable of continuing this job, but only one-third are. What about the others? Students do not attend class regularly, and this is especially common in government institutions.
We do not think it is a problem. Students do not learn their subjects; they are at the final stage of skill acquisition. We do not think it is a problem. Traditional questions are set in examinations year after year without assessing students’ real progress, resulting in their inability to meet market demand even though they hold big certificates.
DSHE’s own research indicates that students are failing to achieve the desired proficiencies in English, mathematics, and even Bengali, a crisis driven by the fact that over 18 per cent of teaching posts in existing government secondary schools are currently vacant.
Because of this lack of proper classroom instruction, students are increasingly forced to rely on commercial coaching and private tutoring, a reality reflected in UNESCO data showing that parents bear 71 per cent of total education costs.
Therefore, instead of focusing solely on isolated megaprojects, the education administration must prioritise the best use of limited government resources by simultaneously improving the quality of existing primary, secondary and higher secondary schools, resolving the teacher shortage and eliminating widespread learning gaps.
We have 702 government secondary schools, with 383 positions of head teacher remaining vacant. The same is true of government primary schools (around 66000), where almost half of the institutions go without head teachers, and this has become a constant affair due to retirements and transfers. However, we do not have any sound policy to address this problem.
We are just talking about government-run institutions, but the non-government ones, which accommodate the largest portion of students, face even more miserable situations that we hardly discuss.
So, before a final decision is made to establish these new 600 Model Schools and Colleges, the government must deeply evaluate long-term operational costs, teacher recruitment capacities and the structural failures of previous projects, aiming to ensure that these new residential model schools and colleges are integrated into a sustainable, holistic framework capable of bringing a truly revolutionary transformation to the country’s education system.
We do not hesitate to say that when the state runs it, it inevitably results in mismanagement and places students far from the desired goals and objectives of education, as our experiences show.
If the government really wants to extend cadet college education to more students, it can accommodate more students by expanding existing colleges and establishing additional houses and academic buildings, without putting pressure on arable land.
The existing 12 cadet colleges can accommodate double or triple the current intake levels if additional infrastructure is built on their campuses, as the original four cadet colleges established in Pakistan have sufficient land to accommodate them easily.
Even the converted six cadet colleges and the newly established two girls’ cadet colleges can accommodate double the number of cadets if more buildings are built, without destroying pure arable land that we cannot create at all, let alone decrease, as the population grows.
Besides, government schools and colleges can be renovated to ensure a pure academic atmosphere for students. Many private-level institutions have been established in different parts of the country, with good facilities. Still, due to a lack of sound administration or other factors, they cannot attract more students, a problem that could be addressed in this project.
Leaving and ignoring all these practical phenomena, we think of establishing more and more educational institutions! Impractical idea indeed! The ministry should have a clear picture of the types of educational institutions by area and whether they meet the needs of existing students, based on the population of those areas. These institutions can be turned into good, attractive educational institutions that most of our educators do not bother to do.
Ministry people always show great interest in new projects and try to convince the government to take them on. They hardly show any genuine feeling for the country, closing their eyes to the real problems. If they had, how would they propose such an ambitious, white-elephant-like project?
We have enough practical experience to know that when the government tries to manage these things, it is sure to create frustrating situations. The government, the ministry, and our government office culture never talk about any sense of discipline or patriotism. They talk otherwise! We are sorry to repeat it.
If the government really wants to extend cadet college-type education, it must surrender responsibility to the cadet college authorities, which are still treated as disciplined institutions, though many wanted to create chaos there; they could not succeed.
This massive project of establishing 600 Model Schools and colleges aims to create government-level ‘Centres of Excellence’ that will grant talented children from low- and limited-income families unprecedented opportunities for intellectual development. This is not a convincing explanation! If the government really wants to do something positive for talented students, it has other means to do so.
Suppose nationalising schools and colleges in the remotest areas of the country and giving double salaries to the teachers who will work there could be a better solution to extend a sound educational atmosphere to students in backward, hard-to-reach areas.
We, however, see the government taking a step back from nationalising educational institutions. It nationalises urban, upazila-level, and better institutions, which runs counter to the idea put before us for constructing 600 Model Institutions.
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.