The recent study on the Creative Productivity Index (CPI) prepared by the Economics Intelligence Unit for the Asian Development Bank, ranks Bangladesh 22nd out of 24 Asian economies (only above Lao PDR and Myanmar) in overall input index, 20th in human capital, and 23rd for infrastructure.
Unless serious and accelerated developments take place in human development, physical, power, IT infrastructure, banking, financial services, and the creation of a pool of high quality manpower that will propel the knowledge economy, Bangladesh’s goal of achieving middle income status will remain a dream.
In addition, when a significant portion of the citizens are excluded from the fruits of development, there cannot be a fair and just society. The inequity in social justice begins with the access to education and basic health services where the poor are generally discriminated against. According to official statistics, there are currently over five million illiterate children under the age of 14, and another 28 million youths and adults over the age of 15 (who are either in the unskilled labour market or unemployed). This article illustrates a story of an innovative effort to address part of the problem.
Supporting the hardest-to-reach children through basic education, SHARE is a unique education program both in design and implementation. It provides direct grant support by the EU to a number of national NGOs who were selected through a competitive process based on published criteria and proven track record of their work in basic education in Bangladesh.
It is estimated that currently there are approximately 4 million children below the age of 14 who are excluded from the basic education system. The numbers include those who never went to primary school as well as those who were once enrolled in public schools but dropped out for reasons such as poverty, social and cultural exclusion, geographical remoteness, etc.
Through four lead NGO project operators and their local partners, SHARE is currently working in 219 upazilas/thanas under seven administrative divisions of Bangladesh. The goal is to provide quality basic education to about 655,000 poor and marginalised children who otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to go to school.
The schools are essentially one classroom structure (with an average of 30 pupils) and one teacher per school, but the projects adopt four different approaches in the education they provide. However, all of them offer national curriculum and textbooks in addition to supplementary materials developed by individual projects.
In one sense, these are very low-cost alternative schools with formally structured learning processes which generally meet or even exceed the practices followed in public primary schools. And yet, they are popularly known as non-formal primary schools in Bangladesh for the simple reason that these schools are operated by the NGOs outside of the public education system.
Although, theoretically, these so-called non-formal primary schools are supposed to enrol only children above the age of eight per government policy, many SHARE schools like the Brac primary schools enrol children from the age of six (official age for grade I) in areas which are unserved or underserved by the public system, viz tea gardens, hilly areas, haor (marshy area,) char (newly emerged river islets), urban slums, etc.
Non-formal primary school is a misnomer. These schools have all the features of any regular school; one distinguishing feature is that the school is run by one teacher only -- usually recruited from the local community with support of the local school management committee (the SMC usually comprise of 50% women).
Although the current common goal is to prepare all children to sit the national Primary Schools Certificate (PSC) examination, the four projects have different approaches to teaching. SHIKHON completes the primary cycle in 48 months including three months’ readiness program for the children, Aloghar in 60 months, UNIQUE in 37 months, and SUSTAIN in 36 months (accelerated program).
They are all based on their proven track record and field-tested experience of their parent organisations (viz Save the Children, Caritas, Dhaka Ahsania Mission, and their partners, namely RDRS, CODEC, CCDB, YPSA, UCEP, Nari Maitree, etc). In almost all cases, the schools have been built or donated by the poor and impoverished communities for the education of their children, many of whom are first generation learners.
Because these projects are mainly working with the local community, one of their key strengths is the creativity and innovation in the teaching-learning process. In addition, the flexibility in project design has given them the opportunity to think out of the box and innovate in aspects of teaching-learning and managing the activities at local levels.
During my recent field visits in some remote and isolated parts of Bangladesh, I was surprised to note a number of these innovations and good practices developed by locally based project personnel.
I thought these home-grown innovations should be captured and recorded for the greater benefits of the NGO community operating such schools, as, in my view, Bangladesh will continue to need these types of alternative schooling for a long time until the government gains the capacity and resources to provide sustainable quality basic education to all children of the country, wherever they may be located.
