The New Nation - Internet Edition

WP Reporter

The First National Education Conference on Whither Policy Reforms in Education in Bangladesh: Lessons and Challenges will be held in Dhaka on 2nd-3rd March 2008.

Policy reforms in education are one of the major concerns in the discussion of development in Bangladesh. The conference is organized to bring specialists, scholars, researchers, education activists and all those interested in educational research and activities together around this topical theme.

Education seems to be intrumentalised as a commodity in this era of global capitalism. In this context, philosophy of education, relation with knowledge and power, meaning and process of learning, relation of education with the role of state and development, globalization of knowledge are some of the key debatable issues in the discourses around generation and control of knowledge.

The decades of economic restructuring throughout 1980s and 1990s have put neo-liberal policies and programes into education system. These neo-liberal reforms have been spearheaded by a range of multilateral and supranational organizations tied into the system of global governance- the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO with participation of national and international nongovernmental agencies. Bangladesh like other economies had to adjust to this new "structural" reality. Education policies and progerammes have been designed, shaped and reshaped in this neo-liberal framework for conformation and reproduction. Neo-liberal educational reforms are directed from the notions of open markets, the reduction of the public sector, the decrease of state intervention and deregulation of markets.

The neoliberal reform agenda transformed education policies, systems, managements and programmes in Bangladesh. Some of the major changes are linked to primary education, technical education, reduction of state intervention in education services, privatization of higher education, initiation of non-formal education, NGOs' involvement in education services, involvement of donor agencies in decision making and implementation.