Private Coaching
Teachers demand scrapping of restriction
A section of school teachers yesterday protested the government's recent policy which says that government and non-government school, college and madrasa teachers cannot offer private coaching to students of their own institutions.
Terming the policy “hasty” and “whimsical”, they demanded that the government scraps the decision within seven days and refrains from issuing a gazette notification on the policy.
A tougher programme will be announced if the policy is not cancelled within seven days, they warned.
The “Policy-2012 to stop teachers from doing coaching business in educational institution” was finalised by the education ministry on June 14.
It states that teachers can provide tuition at their residences to a maximum of 10 students of other institutes a day upon receiving prior permission from their respective heads of the institutions.
The protesting teachers, under the banner “Bangladesh Teachers' Association”, were addressing a press conference at Dhaka Reporters Unity.
The policy should be cancelled taking the fact of the financial condition of teachers and the development of the merit of students into consideration, they said.
The association leaders said it was whimsical to stop private coaching without increasing the salaries of teachers and solving different problems faced by teachers.
“The government should have solved the problems faced by teachers first and then talked to us about the issue before taking such a decision,” said the association President Abul Bashar Hawlader.
The government had not formed a separate pay scale for teachers and had not even increased their salaries. If private coaching was banned, the condition of teachers would worsen further, he said.
“We smell a conspiracy here,” Bashar alleged, saying that the policy bans teachers from offering private coaching but did not say anything about the coaching centres that were continuously mushrooming around the country.
“A section of so-called teachers and people around the education minister had formulated the policy,” he alleged.
All types of coaching should be banned if the government really wants to stop this practice, he said.
Without clarifying, he said the nation would lose its merit if the policy came into effect.
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