Our children are in a difficult situation as schools have once again been closed, starting from January 21 this year due to the deteriorated situation as a result of the omicron variant of Covid-19. Bangladesh educational institutions had the longest closure of 543 days compared to any other country in the world in the first phase until they briefly reopened in September 2021.
According to Bangladesh Primary Education Statistics 2020 Report published by Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MoPME), there are over 21.5 million students enrolled in all types of schools from pre-primary education to grade five in Bangladesh.
While it’s certainly appreciable that, even with limited resources, the Bangladesh government started distance learning support for students, starting from the primary level to above, within a few weeks of when the pandemic hit the country in 2020, Brac’s Rapid Assessment Study in May 2020 revealed that 56% of the students did not take part in online classes due to accessibility constraints.
However, despite that, we can say that somehow, in some capacity, children from primary and secondary schools have been receiving some kind of educational support during the pandemic.
However, children upto five years old have essentially completely been deprived as their early childhood care and development, including the pre-primary learning support, have been severely affected, at both the family and the institutional level as a result of the pandemic.
Startling numbers
According to UNICEF and ARNEC’s Early Childhood Care and Development’s Bangladesh country profile report published as far back as May 2016, there were 15 million children under the age of five in Bangladesh, and that number has only surely increased over the past few years.
And as per the 2019-2020 annual report by the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MoPME), there are approximately 3.8 million pre-primary children enrolled in government primary schools, private schools, and kindergartens. As per the Operational Framework for Pre-primary Education by MoPME published in March 2008, children aged between three to below six years old are considered in the pre-primary group. Therefore, the children from early care and development and pre-primary phases are the ones most deprived from the required support for their development and learning.
Pre-primary education has been recognized as an integral part of primary education as per the National Education Policy approved in 2010. But how much we could support them over the past two years amidst the disruptions caused by Covid-19 is the big question.
Dr Manzoor Ahmad, Professor Emeritus of Brac University and Chair of Bangladesh Early Childhood Development Network (BEN) said:
“The effect of [the] pandemic on children may be described as indirect, nonetheless, serious. Children have not generally been ill from Covid infection. But they suffered severely in three ways. First, young child services, such as health care services, were shut down; even child immunization was halted or slowed down. Secondly, health and economic effects on their families -- illness, death, and loss of job and income affected them. Thirdly, there was emotional and mental stress for them because of trauma in their families and at home. There were also reported cases of an increase in family violence that harmed young children.”
Where was the support?
According to physicians and early childhood development experts, the first eight years of a child’s life is most crucial for both physical and mental development. During this period, a child’s brain is in a flexible state and can experience rapid growth.
As brain development is very sensitive, if a child is exposed to harmful environments and is brought up in a neglected situation where there is insufficient attention and care, then there can be a permanent effect on the child’s development. In particular, such a child is more likely to suffer cognitive, behavioural, and emotional difficulties.
Unfortunately, most parents in Bangladesh are unaware of this scientific fact. The early childhood care and development (ECCD) approach is to provide children along with the parents/caregivers the needed factors of children’s development, such as early nutrition, stimulation, protection, and learning.
While the Bangladesh government has a comprehensive ECCD policy developed in 2013 which emphasizes prioritizing more investment in the early childhood sector -- and this emphasis is to be commended -- to achieve that, coordination of relevant sectors and actually achieving adequate financing is required.
Attention to children became less during the Covid-19 pandemic as it brought bigger issues to the table that needed to be handled by the adults. Even so, it’s not too late for us to focus on this issue and handle the situation.
Dr Md Ahsan Habib, Professor at the Department of Educational Psychology and Guidance, University of Dhaka said:
“If we consider learning from a formal school setting using textbooks, then yes, like pre-primary and primary children, the early learning of children has been interrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic due to school closure. But children's learning does not only happen from textbooks and schools, but they are also continuously under the learning process from their surroundings. From this perspective, I believe, the learning process of children has not been stopped completely and whatever gap is created can be recovered when they return to school.”
As always, the poor suffer the most
The mother of a six-year-old boy, who works in households of Mirpur area told me that she had admitted her son to nursery class in a nearby school in 2020, but because of the pandemic, her son could not complete the pre-primary classes.
As she and her husband have very little education, they cannot support their son’s learning at home. So they arranged for a tutor to support his pre-primary learnings, but that’s an extra financial pressure for them, and extremely difficult given their meagre earnings.
This year in the first week of January, her son was once again admitted to another school, this time in class one. Unfortunately, schools are closed again. Now, they are rightfully worried about their son’s early learning progress. This is a common situation in Bangladesh overall regarding pre-primary education support.
There are many families where the parents are not educated enough to support even the pre-primary education of their children. Syeda Sazia Zaman, an education specialist at IED, Brac University said:
“Due to school closure, children are staying at home and passing a very anxious time. Many of them don’t have enough space, play materials, or anyone to play with or interact. They are not getting a chance to communicate with their peers. They have limited scope to increase their social, emotional, language, and other developmental skills. Many families are going through a financial crisis and also, they are tense about their uncertain future.”
Again, it’s certainly praiseworthy that the Bangladesh government was prompt in introducing distance learning support for primary and secondary students. However, considering the huge number of learners, it was not possible to bring the pre-primary students under the support. As a result, even if the issue was noticed by parents, policy-makers, and ECCD and education experts at the earlier stages of the pandemic, it was not possible to take adequate steps to support these children.
Of course, there were other major issues to deal with; we had to ensure health and safety of the people first and foremost, reduce the spread of the virus, keep the economy running, handle financial setbacks, arrange distance education support for primary and secondary students, and ensure vaccination for the large population of Bangladesh.
However, it’s high time for all of us now to analyze the current situation properly and take the required steps to minimize the gaps that have already adversely affected children, and take the appropriate measures for the future.
The concluding part of this piece will be published tomorrow.
Aziza Md Aziz is a development communication professional. Email: azizamdaziz@gmail.com.