Feature

Unfortunately, the history of education reform in the country is not a pleasant one. The tradition of projects was found to be successfully justifying needs of a new project at the end of each project gradually developing a “project culture”. In this new culture, promises to the nation were made only to be replaced with fresh ones. Therefore, one cannot be blamed for pondering the obvious question: is it the time to be worried about the qualitative outcomes of PEDP II. Will it be able to deliver (quality education) in stipulated timeframe of next two years? The answer is an obvious “no”.

PEDP II is unique in various ways; starting from creating a pool of 11 donors to be the first ever sector/ sub sector wide program in primary education in Bangladesh. The timing of conceptualization of the program coincided with the first country-wide research of Education Watch; showing a stunning picture of only 2% children actually achieving all the measurable terminal competencies. Some critics might blame the study for being a bit harsh. Even those would not argue that the figure would be anything above 10%. The call for education for all by 2015 also demanded serious attention on quality education from both the donors and the government. Therefore, PEDP II was quite justifiably planned with the prime focus of quality education.

Not only because of the focus, also because of a complex nature of the financing, organizational structure, and management of the program, it became a big challenge even just to make it operational at the first place. Considering the complex bureaucratic framework that the government machineries has to operate in, added with even more complex interests of donor's syndicate - many doubted the fate of the project even before its initiation. Those doomsayers were proved wrong with the program becoming operational at the first place. There must have been relentless persuasion from some competent personnel to make it happen. They should pat themselves for what they have been able to accomplish! But, sense of complacency could be counterproductive and all could go in vain if the very complex and multifaceted nature of the problem is not fully appreciated. This appreciation has to be judged in a particular context where improving quality of education has been a tough call throughout the world.

There had been projects in the country to recruit teachers thinking that teachers would be able to ensure quality, which could not be ensured. Emphasis then shifted to teachers training - believing that would be a better remedy. Thus, teacher's training became the core of reform initiative only to frustrate the reformist further. In reality, one can hardly differentiate between teaching of trained and non-trained teacher, as both would focus on memorization rather than learning in a classroom. In this memorization process, the textbooks virtually replace the curriculum. So, the focus shifted to reforming textbooks thinking that might solve the problem but that did not bear the desired result. Furthermore, some even became more confused whether the previous textbooks were better than the current ones. One has to realize that this is not to argue that there is no need for teachers, teacher training or good textbooks for improving quality of education. They surely are very important, but resorting to a linear solution of a highly complex problem can hardly bear results - which have been the case in the country so far.

Quality education is directly linked with what takes place in the classrooms in the name of teaching-learning process on a day-to-day basis.

Public perception of a school is dominated by how children perform in the exams. An informal study using randomly selected primary school exam questionnaires to find out the percentage of questions demanding memorization-based answers revealed that the questionnaires are heavily dominated by such questions provoking memorization. This imposes compulsion on the teachers to decide what should happen in the classroom. Moreover, the best method of teaching that comes naturally to anyone is his own experience of learning, which in most cases is also “memorization” in our country. Therefore, it will rather be naïve to consider that the “teacher's training” or infrastructure would be an answer to the quality education.

If PEDP II is to make any meaningful impact on the quality, the people who run the program should pay attention to the qualitative reform of the assessment system in primary education. Organizations like Brac, Plan Bangladesh etc. already having this experience exist in the country and they are willing to extend their support to PEDP II. Therefore, the question is not whether the know-how exists in the country; rather the question is if PEDP II will be willing to cross the so-called psychological barrier to seek support from those who can help.

As mentioned earlier, improving quality of primary education is a very complex task and the challenge has many faces. Reforming assessment system alone cannot guarantee quality education but it can be taken for granted the other way round - no meaningful and lasting improvement of quality of education is possible without a scientific, meaningful, objective, and qualitative reform of its assessment system.
(The writer is an educationist)