School calendar
The recent hurricane-strength Sidr has made obvious the need for a flexible school calendar in disaster-prone areas; but it is as well necessary in many other regions across the country. Though all our education commissions have recommended decentralization of the education system, the right for scheduling one's own school calendar has been overlooked all along. It is however known that the District Primary Education Officers had certain number of holidays in their hands to give to local schools until it was revoked, maybe, towards the end of the 1980s. Again, on 22 April 1998 in a meeting at then Primary and Mass Education Division (PMED) a decision was taken for some flexibility in local school calendar with due permission from the Division.
Basing on this particular government level decision, Sabalamby Unnayan Samity (SUS), a non-government organisation of Netrokona, made a campaign for the right to make their own school calendar. As a result, in a post-cyclone meeting in Netrokona on 17 September 2007, Mr. Ayub Quadri, then Education Adviser of the present caretaker government, spoke positively of such a calendar. Next, on 21 November in a programme on how to improve quality of education in the upazila of Khaliajuri, jointly organised by SUS and the upazila administration, those present spoke for it in this haor area. Then one by one, the upazila education committees of Khaliajuri, Madon, Mohonganj and Kalmakanda in Netrokona took decision for introducing such a calendar, which now awaits approval at the district level and then finally at the ministry.
If the decision gets the nod from the ministry, it will pave the way for adopting such locally suitable school calendars in other regions of the country like in the hilly and northern districts with indigenous communities, where it is too urgent. School calendar needs to be rescheduled in order to accommodate children who are involved in particular or seasonal works in some areas, for example catching shrimp larvae in the districts of Bhola and Cox's Bazar, picking tea leaves in Sylhet, and engaging in jhum cultivation in the hill districts.
At present our school calendar has 75 days of holidays, besides the usual Fridays, that is nationally set by the ministry. In this, summer vacation imitating the cold European countries is no use here because it rather comes with plenty of delicious fruits. Winter vacation is also fruitless because with new rice it provides more nutrition to children helping them to concentrate on their studies. These vacations can be used for the loss of school hours during the period of floods and other disasters, said Jibon Dey Shyamal of SUS, Netrokona, in a conversation with us.
The ministries concerned should handle the matter in right earnest, keeping in view the ground reality.
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