There are 400 working children living in slums in the capital’s Mirpur area who can now dream of a better life through education, without having to stop working.
They now go to SUSTAIN School, a learning centre offering non-formal education to school dropouts or completely illiterate children who are working low-income jobs in Mirpur.
The school is run by Save the Children, under a project named Support Urban Slum Children to Access Inclusive Non-Formal Education launched in 2012. Funded by the European Union, the school has seven more branches around the capital.
The school has three shifts starting from 8am-6pm, mostly the working children can start their school after 4pm, so its students can come to the school after work, or taking a break from work.
It requires only two hours of its students’ day to train them in life skills and bridge the gap between them and the mainstream academia.
“The idea is to assimilate these under-privileged children into the mainstream academia,” said Kazi Sultan Ahmed, project manager of SUSTAIN in Save the Children.
The school starts from Pre-Play Group and offers education until Class V. Students are trained such a way so that they can appear in the Primary School Certificate (PSC) examination, said Ikramul Islam, community mobiliser in the school, adding that the school’s success rate was 100% in 2015 PSC exams.
Students are also enthusiastic about the prospect of having a chance at education and a respectable career.
“I am in Class V now. I love studying here. I want to be a doctor one day,” said 12-year-old Mubarak Hossain, who works as a truck goods unloader.
Munna Muhammed, 10, works in a restaurant from 7am to 1pm and is also a fifth-grader in SUSTAIN. “I like to come to school. I can meet with my friends here and play with them.”
“The learning model is interactive for children,” said Ikram. “The class system is different: students have to graduate a class in six months instead of a year so that they can catch up with the mainstream schools.”
Students are also encouraged to continue their education after graduating from SUSTAIN.
“We advise and support parents and employers of these children to continue their education after Class V. Some of them have already gone to mainstream schools to pursue further education,” Ikram said.