Md Tanjim Sheikh
Imagine a dystopian city where you are hungry and can only eat in restaurants. The new policy says a human can only eat protein and nothing else. You ordered fish and some chicken, but when the food arrives, it’s raw meat and fish, something we humans can’t digest safely. The waiter says you have to finish eating within 30 minutes or else you’ll be kicked out.
That’s exactly what the Bangladeshi education system sounds like symbolically !
Bangladesh has succeeded in getting children into schools. But, just like the restaurant’s policy, students are forced to acquire a rigid curriculum that changes like the weather within a short period, and evaluation is heavily dependent on exams characterised by limited time and memorization. The current system controls what the students are taught, how they are taught, and how quickly the students must demonstrate, without sufficiently asking whether they actually took away anything intellectually from it. And just like that raw meat or fish, this learning is never safely assimilable for the students.
So can it be changed for the better?
Researchers and global agencies such as UNICEF describe foundational learning as the basic skills upon which all further learning is built: the ability to read with understanding, write clearly, and use basic mathematics. Foundational learning is cumulative: what a child fails to master early can constrain what they are able to learn later. According to a World Bank analysis of learning outcomes in Bangladesh, more than one-third of Grade 3 students could not be classified as readers, while 60% failed to reach the minimum proficiency level in mathematics.
The evidence urgently suggests the need for a National Foundational Learning Guarantee for Grades 1-5. The immediate reform should not be another curriculum announcement or another examination. There should be a guarantee that every child is assessed for foundational competencies and that every child who falls behind receives the support necessary to catch up. That said, the problem isn’t inaction of the government but the inconsistency in translating the assessment into sustained classrooms. In one
Bangladeshi teacher survey, 89% of teachers said regular assessment and remedial classes were essential, while only 40% reported currently conducting them. Teachers may know what needs to be done, but that does not necessarily give them the conditions to make it happen, given the inconsistency of the government in provisioning resources according to teachers’ and institutions’ needs for a sustained teaching environment.
Now, the immediate reform is about making foundational learning itself the responsibility of the system and making it suitable enough for the children’s learning. Every child should have the opportunity to build their foundations strong enough, and every school should have the means to help those who fall behind. Until then, Bangladesh may continue to put children at the table, serve them textbooks and examinations, and call it education. But a meal is not nourishment simply because it was served.
