Quality of education
I agree with the recent comment made by Mr. Olav Seim of UNESCO on the quality of primary and secondary education in Bangladesh. One of the major challenges in education sector in Bangladesh, for that matter in many Asian developing countries, is how to improve the quality of learning. We have been quite successful, mostly with the assistance of donors and government's commitment to increase the enrolment in primary and secondary level (the demand side). Our major focus should now be to find ways to reduce the level of dropout and improving quality of education to contribute to developing a good pool of human capital. One important way we may achieve this goal is through enhancing the student engagement in the learning process which is seriously lacking in our culture of education. Through the strategy of student engagement, the students will enjoy the learning and they will do it in a much more qualitative way than what they learn in the conventional, supply-driven and teacher-cantered learning environment. As the students enjoy learning in this way, the level of dropout will naturally fall. This means we have to work in the supply segment (capacity building of educators) and the environment side (policy and socio-cultural level). Our curriculum should be designed in such a way that it is updated and articulates the right learning objectives, output, pedagogy, assessment and, most importantly, the alignment of all these so that the students can see how it is going to contribute to the development of good human capital who will be able to use the learning to address the challenges they would face. In ensuring this learning environment, we also work on building the capacity of educators so that they are able to create the learning environment in which the student engagement is enhanced. The policy makers' vision is paramount in this case. They should pay high attention to facilitate changing the culture and environment of our learning and teaching.
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