Badarganj primary education in a fix

We fail to understand precisely why 65 out of 176 government primary schools of Rangpur's Badarganj upazila have no headmasters. The schools in question have been in operation without headmasters for a decade or more. Indeed, there is also a chronic shortage of assistant teachers. Hence, the quality of education and the overall administration in these institutions that serve the needs of 9,750 children have been severely hampered. In the absence of headmasters, senior teachers have been doubling as acting head masters and inevitably this puts pressure on maintaining both academic calendar and administration, neither of which runs smoothly.

Although we are informed that the Upazila primary education office has prepared a database of vacant positions in these schools and forwarded it to the Directorate of Primary Education, the bigger question here is why it took more than a decade for the upazila office to come to this realisation. We pride ourselves on our primary education enrolment, but if this is the state of staffing of teachers and administration in schools in one particular upazila, one wonders how bad the situation is all over the district or even in other districts.

It also points to a general lack of monitoring and assessment of the directorate in question. We cannot overemphasise the need for quality primary education. This is the time when children need to increase their knowledge of understanding and reasoning and getting the right education is crucial. The boys and girls of Badarganj upazila are being deprived of better education because of no fault of their own and we would hope the Directorate of Primary Education will take steps to recruit headmasters for the 65 schools as soon as possible.