Education sector needs overhauling

The report that a teacher at the Chirirbandar Government Model Pilot High School examination centre in Dinajpur's Chirirbandar upazila has been fined Tk. 2000 and sentenced to 7 days' prison for helping a student to answer questions through mobile phone app is shocking. When teachers should set examples before their students, such unprincipled behavior on their part is reprehensible.

The report further has it that the teacher in question was sending answers to also 50 other examinees through a WhatsApp group (a community built over the digital  platform to interact with members using WhatsApps' Communication and management features). Clearly, it was not an isolated case where the teacher was trying to help his favourite student to perform better in the examination. For, in this case a commercial motive is clear since a good number of other examinees were also getting the answers from the WhatsApp group. The report further adds that another examinee was also expelled from the same centre for cheating during the school final examination. There is no question that the students found cribbing in the exam be punished. And the penalty for the crime the teacher in question had to pay is no doubt well deserved.  Publicly shaming is another way of punishing such teachers without scruple. But while coming down hard on the errant teacher and the students found cheating in exam, one needs to keep in mind that corruption in its multitudinous forms is endemic in the education sector.

Corrupt practices like leaking of question papers, issuing false certificate for students, mushrooming coaching centres and school teachers' involvement with the coaching business etc., during the autocratic regime were pervasive. It is not just that question papers of schools were leaked. Even, college or university level exams  were not spared. The competitive exams including those held under the Public Service Commission (PSC) were also not immune from question paper leakages. Such unethical practice by teachers and those on the education board was common. So it would be too naive to think that after last year's July uprising, the world has changed for the better, especially in Bangladesh. And so there is no reason to expect that the culture of dishonest dealings and unscrupulousness in our educational institutions created over the decades would vanish overnight. So, by actions like expelling  some students found cheating in exams and punishing a teacher for his misdeed are not going to discourage others from engaging in similar immoral activities. In fact, the entire educational system needs overhauling. First, the schools and colleges in the districts and upazilas must be freed from the influence of the so-called management committees comprising powerful people of the localities concerned. The teachers of the privately-run educational institutions are often made to do the bidding of the local powerful people as the teachers' job depends on their recommendations. And as it is usually the case, these people are corrupt to the marrow. The government-run schools are also not free from unethical practices as noted in the foregoing. If truth be told, corruption starts from the government bodies in charge of education.

One might recall at this point what late Dr Akbar Ali Khan, an eminent economist and educationist, once said about our education sector. He said, "Corruption in the education sector is the root of all kinds of corruption, and it fuels corruption in other sectors." Some government bodies in charge of monitoring and ensuring fund flow to the schools such as the Shikkha Bhaban (Education Building), the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Boards, etc., that look after Monthly Pay Orders (MPOs), retirement benefits for teachers, procurement of educational materials and so on are the main sources of corruption as nothing, reportedly, moves there without speed money. In some cases, both the corrupt quarters in the education boards in collusion with local vested interests draw MPOs for schools that do not exist in reality. What we are talking here is about an Augean Stables that needs to be mucked out.

The question is who is to start doing the herculean task.

sfalim.ds@gmail.com