Experts for holistic approach to achieve SDG-4

Educationists and activists called for taking a holistic approach to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG)-4 by 2030 in Bangladesh aimed at ensuring ‘Inclusive and Equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.’

Despite attaining many successes in the education sector, there are many challenges for Bangladesh to fulfill the SDG-4 target as a large number of children of disadvantaged groups are failing to continue their studies, they observed while talking to BSS.

The SDG-4 target covers primary to tertiary education, technical and vocational education, skills development of the youth and the adults, literacy and numeracy of the population, inclusiveness and equity in education, quality of education and of teachers, said Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE).

“If we look back to the EFA (Education For ALL) and MDG (Millennium Development Goal) era, we find impressive progress achieved in Bangladesh in ensuring access and attaining gender parity at the primary and secondary levels,” she said, adding despite the commendable success, over one-fifth of students still do not complete the five-year primary cycle due to dropout and grade repetition.

Less than half of children aged 11 to 15 years are enrolled in secondary schools, Rasheda said, adding high dropout at the secondary level results in less than one-third of the age group completing the secondary school certificate (SSC).

She said only around 11 percent of out of school youths participate in formal or non-formal work-related training, with informal apprenticeship accounting for more than half.

Rasheda said, “Quality education is a challenge for Bangladesh…….Teacher-student ratio remained short of the interim target of 1.40. EFA and MDG obviously left us with some unfinished agenda, which have to be addressed in the SDG era in addition to new priorities,”

“If we want to achieve the target of SDG-4 by 2030, we must increase resource allocation and mobilization. The percentage of budgetary allocation for education should be 20 percent of total budget,” she suggested.

To improve standard of education, Rasheda said, the country needs to have stronger political commitment, appropriate strategies to implement the National Education Policy 2010, combined with adequate resource allocation and its judicious and transparent utilization.

Md Alamgir, secretary of Technical and Madrasah Division, said Bangladesh has achieved impressive progress in ensuring access and attaining gender parity at the primary and secondary levels and the country has to go a long way in addressing the task of raising the quality of education.

“One major success has been the achievement of the goal of universal enrolment at the primary level. A significant decrease in school dropout rate from 40 percent 10 years ago to 18 percent today is another milestone,” he added.

Alamgir said there is no alternative to increasing budgetary allocation to improve quality of education, which is considered as prime challenge of the education sector. We are taking many technology-based innovative approaches to ensure quality education…. Alongside the government’s efforts, non-government actors must play a crucial role in improving quality education,” he added.

Alongside public funding, private sector should invest in the education sector, which eventually would produce better outcome for the overall development of the country, he said.

According to education experts, current level of budgetary allocation for education is, by any standard, well below than what is required.

They said the share of education sector budget has declined over the recent years, both as percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and as a share of total budget.

Share of education budget as a proportion of the total budget, decreased to 11.6 percent in the fiscal 2016 from 15.9 per cent in the fiscal 2007, they pointed out.

According to World Development Indicator (WDI) data, Bangladesh, with an education budget to the tune of 1.9 percent of GDP, has ranked 155 out of 161 countries in the world.

In all other South Asian countries, the corresponding figures are higher (Afghanistan: 4.6 percent, Bhutan: 5.6 percent, Nepal 4.1 percent, India 3.9 percent and Pakistan 2.5 percent), the WDI added.

Source: BSS