With children feeling compelled to choose employment over education in the littoral areas of Cox’s Bazar, schools are emptying out at an alarming rate.
Pronouncements about a literacy rate target of 100% are lost beneath the sound of crashing waves on the seaside, where hundreds of children busily salt and cure fish when they should be in class.
The poverty-stricken district’s annual average dropout rate is a staggering 16.88%.
According to the district’s primary education office, 7,195 boys and 6,360 girls had dropped out of school in 2015, abandoning 599 government and private schools in eight upazilas.
The problem is primarily economic.
“Limited sources of income in the district force children into work,” Kabir Ahmed Sawdagar, chairman of the Cox’s Bazar Fishing Boat Owners Association, told the Dhaka Tribune. “If you want more youngsters in school, improve the employment opportunities in the district for adults,” he said.
During a visit to the coastal areas organised and funded by the Bangladesh Shishu Adhikar Forum, the Dhaka Tribune found that in Maheshkhali, Sundaripara and Kutubdia most dropouts come from poor families.
The major source of income in the area is fish drying.
“A majority of these dropouts will never return to school because their parents prefer that they work to earn extra money for the household. Poverty in the area is very high,” District Primary Education Officer ABM Siddiqur Rahman explained to the Dhaka Tribune.
Siddiqur said attendance was better in the Sadar upazila, but in remote areas like Maheshkhali and Kutubdia, schoolchildren often drop out to help family with work in the dried fish industry.
“We try to counsel them against leaving school but some students live in such remote areas that teachers cannot easily get there,” he says.
Fish drying is done for nine months of the year, from September to May. Poor families in the coastal areas try to maximise their earnings during this time.
Talking to the Dhaka Tribune, Kamrunnahar, a mother of five children, said: “It is better to make Tk60 per day working than wasting time in school.”
“If I send my child to school, what will we eat?” she asks.
After speaking to dozens of families, it appeared as though most inhabitants of Maheshkhali upazila are not willing to let their children study beyond class III.
The common sentiment was: “If it is a girl, better to marry her off; if it is a boy, then he had better dry fish or collect wood to sell in the bazaar.”
Marina Jannat, just 17-years-old and already the mother of a girl named Mamuni, told the Dhaka Tribune that not marrying early would have been a sin and a mistake because she might not find a husband later.
Drawn by the promise of biscuits and a monthly stipend, school attendance is relatively good between classes I and III, said Maheshkhali upazila education officer Ashish Chiarn. But the numbers drop off steeply after class III, he added.
The data seems to bear this out.
According to the district primary education office, in Kutubdia upazila in 2014, there were 4,485 students in class IV. In 2015, the number of students in class V is just 3,300.
In Teknaf upazila, in 2014 the number of students enrolled in class IV was 7,338. In 2015, just 5,730 students enrolled in class V.
Attempts to convince parents to send their children to school must overcome the reality of poverty, the pull of tradition and the language gap between standard Bangla and the coastal dialects.
Officials of the education office admit that they have difficulty communicating with pupils’ guardians because they are linguistically ill-equipped to do so.
ABM Siddiqur Rahman, district primary education officer, said attempts are now being made to reach out to families in the local dialects.
