Shocking state of private primary schools

We are shocked to learn about the number of privately run primary schools that were permanently closed across Bangladesh in just one year since the Covid pandemic broke out in early 2020. According to a government report, 14,111 such schools—mostly kindergartens or those run by NGOs—were permanently shut down during this time because the authorities could not bear their operational costs. During the same period, the number of teachers and students in these primary schools also fell drastically; according to the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE), the number of teachers declined by 83,268 and students by 1,461,634. We believe this situation needs immediate attention of the government.

The DPE report has, in fact, revealed some crucial facts that we were not aware of until now. While we were somewhat aware of the high rates of school dropouts in the past two years, we were totally in the dark about the high number of teachers who lost their jobs and never got them back.

Moreover, the decline in the enrolment of students in pre-primary schools—reportedly, while 3.9 million students were enrolled in pre-primary schools in 2020, the number fell to 3.1 million in 2021—is something we should take seriously, and the reasons behind this must also be found out.

The DPE authorities are saying that many of the private primary school students shifted to government primary schools due to the permanent closure of their institutions. But did all of them enrol in government primary schools? We need proper data before we can reach this conclusion.

Also, the DPE report has only revealed the situation of the first year of the pandemic; we fear the situation may be worse now. Thus, what we need now is a proper analysis of the situation on the ground and act urgently to improve the overall state of our primary education sector.

As for the private primary schools that have been closed permanently, we think the government should give them some kind of financial incentives and hold discussions with their owners—mostly NGOs—to make them reopen soon. But before doing that, all such institutions must be brought under a regulatory framework, as educationists have opined.