The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Dhaka

Finance Adviser Dr Mirza Azizul Islam yesterday said teaching profession has now become a commercial proposition while schools are a springboard to open up coaching centres.

He also blamed "politicisation" of the entire educational system for poor education quality. "We must improve overall governance scenario to improve the quality of education," the Adviser told the concluding session of a three-day conference on education governance at the NEC conference room.

"Unless you can prevent the politicisation by the local government institutions, I'm afraid, the desired results will not be achieved," he said.

The conference was attended by over 80 participants from the central and field level in primary and secondary education, academics, and representatives from NGOs and other stakeholders. UNESCO and Bangladesh National Commission for UNESCO in cooperation with the ministries of Education, and Primary and Mass Education (MoPME) organised the conference on 'Governance in Education:

Transparency, Accountability and Effectiveness'.

Primary and Mass Education Adviser Rasheda K Chowdhury and Asian Development Bank (ADB) country director Hua Du also spoke at the meeting, chaired by MoPME secretary M Mosharraf Hossain.

The Finance Adviser assured full financial support, as instructed by the Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed, to improve governance and quality in the education sector. "But effectiveness of the expenditure must be assured," he said.

About the sorry state of the education sector, he mentioned that the service conditions like promotion of teachers are "determined politically." He said the education system would have to adopt a seniority policy for promotion of teachers discarding only merit-basis promotion.

Dr Aziz added that all the supervisory officers, who are to evaluate such merit-basis promotion, have become politicians and tend to give substantially higher number to teachers in their ACR (Annual Confidential Report) to gain popularity. The 3-day conference has developed a 10-point framework for action in improving governance to achieve better outcomes in education, including decentralisation of authority with accountability in educational management at local level and individual institutions.

The Finance Adviser stressed the need for proper implementation of the recommendations.

ADB country director Hua Du assured donors' support in implementing the recommendations to help improve the governance and quality of education in Bangladesh.