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Sunday 5 June 2016

Missionary and Visionary Teachers and Officers - A Challenge to be Addressed in Primary Education in Bangladesh



Bangladesh’s miraculous and history making success in primary education is now an exemplary model for the world community to follow. The government was committed to providing basic education to all of its children and eventually this was achieved with the positive efforts and attitudes of GO-NGOs and concerned stakeholders. As the economic development of Bangladesh mostly depends on a productive workforce a youth workforce may lead the country’s future socio-economic development, therefore it is obligatory the government must make the country’s future generation a productive workforce. Only qualitative primary education may build our future generation to be a productive workforce.  Besides providing qualitative basic education, future generations also need to provide qualitative healthcare facilities to strengthen their journey to develop them as a productive workforce in the future. Productive workforces ensure earnings, savings and paying taxes which increase economic growth and ensure development.

Qualitative primary education not only depends on qualified and competent teachers but also depends on the commitment and positive attitude of those teachers. Developing teacher competencies among teachers is not a hard task and the government has developed competent primary school teachers by providing training to them. But developing commitment and bringing a positive attitude into the classroom are difficult and these are the crying needs for ensuring qualitative primary education.
Once, Bangladesh had bamboo built primary schools with poor infrastructural facilities, however the outcomes from schools was extraordinary. Nowadays, despite providing superb hardware (sophisticated child friendly infrastructural facilities) and software facilities (manifold training, multimedia classrooms etc.) outcomes are not satisfactory. The main reason behind deterioration of primary school achievement, regarding students’ performances, is that in the past teachers were missionaries as well as visionaries. Despite having inadequate educational qualifications and insufficient training, they had morality within themselves. At present teachers are receiving a range of training including C–in-Ed/DPEd, curriculum dissemination, subject based training, inclusive education, lesson study, leadership, academic supervision, pre-primary education, test item development, ECL (Each Child Learning) etc. However, the application of achieved knowledge, skills and attitude from training is very poor. The burning question is - why teachers are not utilising their achieved knowledge and skills in teaching-learning activities in the classrooms? Many teachers, especially in newly nationalised primary schools, struggle to adapt to the new training which is enriched with high standard content.

Primary school teachers experience a variety of training in order to achieve knowledge and skills. For the time being provide only DPEd (teachers having no professional training), curriculum dissemination, pre-primary education (only for pre-primary teachers) and induction/subject based training (only for newly appointed teachers) and suspend all other training. Rather teachers should be provided with frequent short term training for developing morality as well as possessing vision and mission within themselves. These sorts of motivational training need suitable manuals or modules. Besides providing the above mentioned motivational training, teachers might be given self-learning materials/manuals to be self-motivated. Self-learning materials must include efforts and contributions of missionaries/educationalists/teachers/social workers like William Carey, Begum Rokeya, Mother Teresa, Valerie Taylor, Md Nurul Alam (Ex. Head Teacher, Shibram Government Primary School, Sundargonj, Gaibandha), Md Shamsur Rahman (EX. Head Teacher, Kamal Bazar Government Primary School, Dakshin Surma, Sylhet), Mrs. Hosne Ara Akter (Head Teacher, Baimhati Government Primary School, Mirjapur, Tangail) etc. In addition, recent much discussed explored personalities, including Sada Moner Manosh (Man of the golden heart), who have significant experience in the expansion of education, might be included in the self-learning manuals for developing teachers as visionary and missionary. Supervisory officers should also be provided with these types of motivational training to strengthen their morality as they should also have vision and mission.

To ensure qualitative primary education, each and every primary school teacher should consider his/her school as a mission and his/her job like a missionary. Education officers should also think their job like missionaries. Existing content, mode and nature of training can never change their attitudes to become them as missionaries. Only motivational training can make them missionaries suitable for fulfilling the government’s vision of providing quality education to all children with a view to building a productive workforce for the socio-economic development of the country.

It is true that to pave a way towards developing missionaries and visionary teachers, there might be the provision of motivational incentives for teachers in addition to organising motivational training for them and supplying them with self-learning manuals. To remove monotony among teachers because of working in the remotest rural primary schools for a long time, there should be an auto transfer policy for them. Primary schools might be categorised into urban, rural and hard to reach area schools. By keeping provision of greater salary and benefits (conveyance allowance, food allowance, transport allowance etc.) for teachers of hard to reach and rural areas schools than teachers of urban schools, teachers might be transferred to a different categories school after a certain period. In addition, initial supervisory officer posts might be filled by giving promotion to head teachers. Moreover, there might be a ladder for teachers and officers to get promotion to the next higher post timely and regularly. This is the hard reality that primary education in Bangladesh needs professionalism for its rapid and qualitative development.

By developing primary school teachers and officers as missionaries, the government can bring massive success in the quality of primary education in regards to building a future generation as a productive workforce. Stakeholders concerned with primary education should extend their support and cooperation to make the initiative a success.

Md Bayazid Khan
The writer workings in primary education in Bangladesh.

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