Primary schools are facing shortage of qualified and skilled teachers as talented people do not take up teaching as profession because of low status, poor salary and no promotion in the job.
Teachers working in government primary schools have become Class III government employees since the nationalisation of primary education in 1973. The status has not yet been upgraded.
The poor salary of a primary teacher is another reason why schools are not getting qualified teachers.
A non-trained assistant teacher gets Tk 4,700 in the pay scale. With house rent and other enumerations, an assistant teacher earns Tk 8,050 a month.
The salary is even lower for teachers in non-government primary schools where an assistant teacher gets Tk 5,100 a month.
A primary teacher in India gets three times the salary a teacher gets in Bangladesh, said Manzoor Ahmed of the BRAC University's Institute of Educational Development.
Manzoor and other educationists say that this low status and poor salary are having impact on children's education at the primary level.
'Will a university graduate want to be a Class III government employee?' Manzoor said. 'University graduates do not take up teaching in primary schools as a profession. When people who have nowhere to go are taking this profession, we should not expect qualified teachers to come in.'
Dhaka University Professor Emeritus Serajul Islam Choudhury said, 'Primary education is the most important part of education as it creates the foundation of education for a student. If primary education is hampered for lack of qualified teachers, the whole education system will suffer.'
Many others take up teaching as a profession but they do not want to continue. Teaching has now become 'a transit profession' for many talented job-seekers who take up the profession for a transitional time and look for better options.
A head teacher of a primary school in the capital told New Age that two teachers had recently left her school.
Faruk Alam, an assistant teacher in the BG Press Government Primary School said, 'It is difficult to continue in a profession when you know that you will be spending your life in one position.'
A primary teacher begins an assistant teacher and he can only be the headmaster after being promoted. There is no other career option for a primary teacher.
'My friends who joined apparel factories have been promoted five to six times. But I have been as an assistant teacher for 24 years,' Faruk said.
As such, many positions of teachers are vacant in government primary schools.
The Nababerbagh Government Primary School at Mirpur in the capital has five teachers for 750 students.
In the country, 2,171 positions of headmaster and 4,731 of assistant teacher in 37,672 government primary schools are vacant, the primary and mass education minister, Afsarul Ameen, told the parliament on December 7, 2010. Directorate of Primary Education officials said the number of vacant positions had increased further.
Siddiqur Rahman of the Institute of Education Research in University of Dhaka said that it is not possible to improve the primary education system without increasing the salary and giving more career options for teachers.
Siddiqur, also a member on the committee that formulated the Education Policy 2010, said that it was possible to create more positions within the existing system.
'There are now only two positions in primary teaching — assistant teacher and the headmaster. There can be four positions — assistant teacher, senior teacher, assistant headmaster and the headmaster,' he said. 'There should be a career ladder so that a teacher can get promoted as field-level officials,' he said.
Many studies and committee reports have for long been recommending that the status and the promotion system of primary teachers should be changed.
The National Committee for Primary Education 1997 proposed a system for primary teachers so that a teacher can be promoted to be the director general of Directorate of Primary Education.
But no such recommendation has been implemented. Teachers believe that field-level educational officials and administrative officials in the primary education directorate do not want to change the status of teachers.
'If a teacher can be the director general of the directorate, it will be a problem for them as they would not get the chance to be the director general,' said a primary teacher. 'Field-level education officials will not be able to dominate us if our status is upgraded,' he said.
'The recruitment policy needs to be changed to put in place a promotion system for primary teachers. But primary education directorate officials are obstructing changes in the recruitment policy,' said Siddiqur Rahman, secretary of the Bangladesh Primary Teachers' Association.
The primary and mass education secretary, AKM Abdul Awal Mazumder, said that the ministry was trying to increase the salary of primary schoolteachers. 'The headmaster's salary will be increased very soon. We are also trying to increase assistant teacher's salary,' he said.
'We are trying to amend the recruitment policy so that primary teachers can get more chances of being promoted to field-level officials,' he added.
News Source: New Age
No comments:
Post a Comment