It has taken a once-in-a-lifetime crisis to realize the importance and the need for governments to pro-actively support industries to prevent the collapse of national economies. Yet, here we are, with parents targeting private English-medium schools by demanding significant reduction of tuition fees.
Surprisingly, this comes at a time when these schools have committed selflessly to providing online education for all students, while incurring each and every expense without respite -- including paying full salaries of all teachers and staff, investing in online technology infrastructure, incurring teacher training expenses, the costs associated with online course curriculum, bank loan repayments, utility bills, taxes, and much more.
How did the situation reach this crossroads and why are private English-medium schools in Bangladesh being made the scapegoats of this pandemic? Why are we pushing them to a point where there would be mass closures of these institutions?
Let us step back and draw the timeline for the readers’ benefit.
As is recognized widely, private English-medium schools form one of the strongest pillars of the nation’s education system, providing global standard education to our children. This is invaluable to replenishing the country’s skill base and is made possible due to the extensive investments by English-medium schools in providing the latest state-of-the-art technology, infrastructure, and international curriculum to students.
It is common knowledge that every year, students of various private English-medium schools are recognized for their outstanding academic achievements; in fact, many of these students go on to receive international scholarships and acclaim on behalf of our nation.
It is worth adding here that while the majority of educational institutions across Bangladesh closed down during the pandemic, private English-medium schools stood out as jewels in our education system, working day and night to commit continuity in education for all their students.
From investing heavily in training teachers to make them come up to speed on progressive and world-class online teaching methodologies to putting the required online teaching technology infrastructure in place overnight, there has been no stone left unturned by private English-medium schools in guaranteeing seamless education to students during the holidays and beyond.
At the same time, several guardians of school students claimed to have suffered significant reduction in financial income due to either job losses or business setbacks, and demanded that private English-medium schools give 50% tuition fee waivers.
Some independently-formed parent forums went to courts, and others to the Directorate General of Higher and Secondary Education (DHSE), Ministry of Education, to enforce this demand.
During this period, many of these parents, under the negative influence of the above-mentioned parent forums, have arbitrarily decided to stop payment of tuition fees, attempting to push private English-medium school authorities to a corner to give in to their demands.
While the financial distress that some parents are going through is understandable, why are parents targeting their anger at these schools?
Why are parents attempting to bring down the very institutions that are building their children’s lives, rather than protecting these institutions by appealing to the government to provide financial support for tuition fee payments?
Shouldn't the parents rather be asking the government to waive off other big-ticket expenses such as bank loans, EMIs, and utility bills, than let their children’s education be the first to suffer?
The school sector is a high-investment, very low-margin space. If it were not so, one would have found many business enterprises populating this sector by now, which is clearly not the case. On top of this, private English-medium schools have only one single source of income -- which is their tuition fees.
If this fee is not received, from where will these schools be able to pay for their many expenditures? If schools cannot pay salaries of their teachers, how will these highly committed educators be able to teach?
In fact, with increasing non-payment of fees, most private English-medium schools this author reached out to have already reached a critical state of collapse.
One Dhanmondi-based school principal was in tears at the school’s financial distress, mentioning how more than 50% parents have stopped paying fees, forcing the school to a state of imminent closure. The same sentiment is visible across other private English-medium schools in Dhaka and Chittagong that I reached out to.
With no exaggeration, we are looking at a national disaster in the making.
School closures carry high social and economic costs for people across communities. It takes years of investment for a nation to build a high-quality educational system -- and only a few months for it all to break down. Recovery will be impossible in the short term if the schools do not get adequate support from the regulators.
It’s time that the government takes a lead and does something to immediately stop the impending downfall of private English-medium schools.
Otherwise, the future of this sector is very bleak, with mass closures of these schools around the corner, which will result in thousands of teachers and staff losing jobs and students’ education deeply compromised.
Morshed Alam is a freelance contributor.
