THE cost of education has increased, as a research that the Campaign for Popular Education has conducted says. The findings of the research, which has surveyed more than 7,000 students, teachers, guardians, education officials and other officials in the administration in 16 districts of the eight divisions, have been compiled into a report, 鈥楨ducation Watch Study 2023: School Education in Bangladesh: Post-Pandemic Resilience and Sustainability鈥� that was made public in Dhaka on March 30. The report says that education expenses at the primary level increased by 25 per cent in the first six months of 2023 while the expense at the secondary level increased by 51 per cent in the period. The increase, as the report says, has been due to the spending on private coaching and the purchase of commercial guidebooks and notebooks. Guidebooks or notebooks which are summaries of textbooks that try to build a royal road to learning by doing the hassle of the toil that the students are supposed to do have earlier come to be called by education assistance materials even by the government. Understandably, an increase in prices of education accessories has also played a role in the increase in education cost.
The research finds that the average annual family cost of education for a primary student in 2022 was Tk 13,882 and a 25 per cent increase took the figure to Tk 3,470.5 in 2023, which breaks down to an increase by about Tk 860 a month. Similarly, the average annual family cost of education for a secondary students in 2022 was Tk 27,340 and a 51 per cent increase took the figure to Tk 13,943.4, which breaks down to more than Tk 1,111 a month. Such an increase in the cost of education appears to have become an additional burden on the families that were already constrained by the economic fallout of the Covid outbreak and soaring inflation. The research says that 4.5 per cent of Class II students and 6 per cent of Class VI students were no longer enrolled with schools in 2023, especially because of the Covid outbreak and the extent it constraint livelihood of the families. The research further finds that the Covid-time closure of schools 鈥� March 17, 2020鈥揝eptember 11, 2021, in the first phase, and in January 21, 2022鈥揊ebruary 21, 2022, in the second phase, totalling 19 months in all 鈥� caused disruption in the education of 37 million schoolchildren.
All this warrants that the government must work to keep the cost of education down or take measures so that students, dropped out or still enrolled, could continue with their education. While some experts say that the new curriculum would dispense with the need for guidebooks and notebooks, some others say that students till use guidebooks and notebooks and resort to private coaching. The research reports dependence of 92 per cent of primary students and 93 per cent of secondary students on commercial guidebooks. The government must,m therefore, root out the need for notebooks and private coaching by employing good teachers or by training the teachers already employed to keep the cost of education down.