Goutam Roy

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most education providers could not offer face-to-face educational support to Rohingya children in the camp at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh; however, some sector partners provided education online, and ‘Home School’ was one of them. This article intends to examine and learn to what extent and how home school education produced new knowledge for Rohingya children and promoted the sustainability of Rohingyas in the camp during the COVID-19 pandemic. A qualitative research approach was used to discern the impact of online education on the sustainable livelihood of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh. Using purposive sampling, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with Rohingya refugee children, key informant interviews with education providers, and teachers who worked in the camp during COVID-19. The conversation analysis technique was applied to analyse data. The findings of this study uncover that, regardless of some downsides, including the lack of endowment for formal education, the shortage of community mobilisers, the limited subjects offered, the limited duration of class time, and weak internet connection, home school education contributed enormously to ensuring the sustainable livelihood of Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh by ensuring a safe and securing learning space and upholding the equal participation of boys and girls, and contributed to recovery from trauma and fear of violence in the camp.

ABSTRACT This article examines the contribution made by education in Bangladesh using primary data gained from a small scale of research. Secondary data also supplements. Both school and out-of-school education is considered in this study. Findings show that primary education contributes mainly for social development. Secondary provision also contributes mainly for social development, some attempts in contributing economical development are made of but these are not working properly because of existing education system and job pattern. Higher Education (HE) consumes a large portion of public and private fund to ensure economic development. Unfortunately, because of existing job pattern of Bangladesh and requirements placed for recruitment, contribution from HE is low where investment to per unit is reasonably higher. Overall conclusion suggests that there is a scope for development at each provision. This study also advocates an urgent need to conduct a broader study on this issue to make the education system more effective towards the development.

This paper explores the situation of the primary and secondary-aged children who were out of respective school education in Bangladesh. Along with presenting the rate of out of school children considering various pockets and marginalized groups in Bangladesh, this paper also provides the reasons behind this out-of-school situation. The findings of this article are mainly based on secondary information but in the case of Plan intervention areas, primary data is used. The findings revels that though the enrolment rate in primary schools was very high, but a number of primary-aged children were out from primary education. Besides, around half of the students, who admitted in grade 1, cannot finish their full cycle of primary education. The exclusion rate for secondary-aged children in secondary education is considerably higher than the primary education. Along with the other reasons, lack of awareness of the parents and poor economic strength were two major causes for this high exclusi...

This paper examines student-centred classroom practices of English of Bangladeshi secondary schools and underlines secondary English learners' self-reported learning styles in accordance with student-centred classroom activities. Following the mixedmethod approach, data were collected using a questionnaire survey, classroom observation, focus group discussion (FGD), and semi-structured interview. For a comprehensive understanding of the actual scenario, data was collected from secondary schools located in urban, semi-urban, and rural part of Bangladesh. Data retrieved from the questionnaire survey indicates that students' preferred learning styles predominantly overlap with the features of tactile and kinesthetic learning styles. Classroom observation demonstrates that teachers have the tendency to control the class even within the student-centred classroom activities. FGD reveals that students were moving towards independent learning. Triangulated data suggests a lower to moderate level of student-centred classroom practices prevalent in secondary English classes. Findings also seem to direct that while students were showing promises in their readiness towards independent learning, teachers failed to provide them with necessary scopes. One pedagogical implication is that an innovation in the assessment system (in the form of assignment or project) would surely reflect students' preferred learning styles and, at the same time, would enhance student-centeredness in the existing classroom practices.

This article examines the contribution made by education in Bangladesh using primary data gained from a small scale of research. Secondary data also supplements. Both school and out-of-school education is considered in this study. Findings show that primary education contributes mainly for social development. Secondary provision also contributes mainly for social development, some attempts in contributing economical development are made of but these are not working properly because of existing education system and job pattern. Higher Education (HE) consumes a large portion of public and private fund to ensure economic development. Unfortunately, because of existing job pattern of Bangladesh and requirements placed for recruitment, contribution from HE is low where investment to per unit is reasonably higher. Overall conclusion suggests that there is a scope for development at each provision. This study also advocates an urgent need to conduct a broader study on this issue to make th...

Bangladesh is extremely vulnerable to earthquake risk and children are the most vulnerable considering the age and dependency situation. The study objective aimed to understand the situation of the primary schools regarding their earthquake preparedness in Plan intervention areas. The study combined both quantitative and qualitative approaches and considered all program areas of Plan Bangladesh. A school survey was carried out on randomly selected 140 primary schools. Besides, the study included primary school teachers, School Managing Committee (SMC) members, students and their guardians, local authority and NGO professionals as respondents. Findings reveal that though the primary schools were not prepared for earthquake challenges but they were aware and had some knowledge on this issue. Existing physical structures of the surveyed schools, in general, were not good as many schools were using non-usable or damaged building for teaching-learning and most of the buildings were not d...

The aim of this paper is to find the causes behind poor performance in English subject of the primary students of Bangladesh. Data derived from both primary and secondary sources while primary data were collected through in-depth interview and informal discussions from primary school-teachers, students and their parents. Findings revealed that among the four language skills, students were the weakest in writing skill. Respondents opined that English teaching-learning process in classroom was not appropriate and, thus, students got less interest to learn English. A fear in English among the students was also responsible for their poor performance.

Using the competency-based test instrument developed for Education Watch 2000 this study made a comparison of learning achievement of two types of primary schools viz., government primary schools (GPS) and BRAC primary schools (BPS). Sixty schools from rural Bangladesh equally distributed by type was randomly chosen for the study. Number of students under test was 600 from BPS and 581 from GPS. Education Watch data of 2000 and other datasets on BPS on the same issue were used to see the improvement in performance over time. The analyses reveal that the overall performance of BPS was slightly better than that of GPS. The gap between BPS and GPS narrowed down from 2000 to 2006. There is still scope for both the sub-systems to improve in achievement of more competencies by the students including gender equity. Students were well in the test items assessing knowledge but they were found weak in those items requiring 'understanding level' of skills. Scope to improve 'understanding level' of skills of the students cannot be ignored.

Under a broader aim of exploring the quality of BRAC Education Programme (BEP), this study aims to examine the level of competency achievement of the BRAC primary school students graduated in 2005. Randomly selected 5,946 students (65% girls) from 298 schools under 150 BEP programme areas were sampled for the test. In addition, background information of the students, schools, teachers, programme organizers, and area managers were collected. In general, the students did very well in the test with an average achievement of 22.7 competencies, and 10% of the students achieved all the 27 competencies under test. Proportion of contents in the textbooks taught in the classes, duration of attachment of programme organizers with the schools, experience of area managers and religion of the students came out as significant predictors of performance of the schools. A number of suggestions were also made.

The aim of this study was to explore the feasibility of a new course on educational evaluation and assessment. In-depth interviews were carried out with a checklist prepared through field trials. Number of respondents was 19, 16 from the non-government organisations and three from the government education department. Junior, mid and senior levels officials were in the sample. The findings reveal that short certificate courses are needed on educational evaluation and assessment. Both the government and non-government education officials were interested in it. Duration of the course was suggested to beof four weeks. Involvement of high officials of the ministry and the NGO leaders in the course advisory board should be considered seriously.

This paper explores the situation of the primary and secondary-aged children who are currently out of respective school education in Bangladesh. Along with presenting the rate of out of school children considering various pockets and marginalized groups in Bangladesh, this paper also provides the reasons behind this out-of-school situation. The findings of this article are mainly based on secondary information but in the case of Plan intervention areas, primary data is used. The findings revels that though the enrolment rate in primary schools was very high, but a number of primary-aged children were out from primary education. Besides, around half of the students, who admitted in grade 1, cannot finish their full cycle of primary education. The exclusion rate for secondary-aged children in secondary education is considerably higher than the primary education. Along with the other reasons, lack of awareness of the parents and poor economic strength were two major causes for this high exclusion for both primary and secondary stages. Communication problem, sickness, disability etc. were other important reasons for out-of-schooling and, at the same time, the reasons are interrelated.

Differential learning achievement of the graduates of three types of BRAC schools viz., BRAC primary school, BRAC community school and BRAC formal school came out through a recent study with some hypothetical explanation of the reasons behind such difference. This study aims to fill this gap through an in-depth and qualitative exploration. Observation, in-depth interview and focus group discussion were the techniques applied using various checklists. Although the aim and objectives of all three types of schools were similar to those of the national level, the formal school students had better home background, qualified teachers, longer contact hour, use of full range of government prepared textbooks, and other enabling conditions in the schools, thus they had better performance compared to the other two types of school. In terms of value addition, the BPS model has contributed more than others with their limited wealth.

The study analyzed the textbooks, storybooks and teachers guide series for primary level education named ‘Eso Pori’ through document reviews process. Based on content, direction and examples found in the books, the classwise attainable competencies are classified on three groups- ‘totally reflected’, ‘partly reflected’ and ‘not reflected’. It was found that around one-fourth of the competencies were totally reflected on class 1 materials. More than one-third of the competencies were totally reflected on class 2 materials. Around half of the competencies were partly reflected on class 3 materials. Study findings suggested more attention needed to reform and rearrange the content of the textbooks according to the terminal and classwise attainable competencies.

In recent years, motivation has received noticeable research attention. Self-motivated students' online learning efforts can be influenced by their ability to control their thoughts, learning behaviour, and motivation. Studies indicate that motivation in online learning does not gain adequate attention. This chapter will contribute to fulfil the gap and offer prospects for online higher education in Bangladesh. It will highlight some detailed empirical findings regarding motivation in online learning of tertiary students of Bangladesh and its association with students' academic achievement. The chapter will also provide some suggestions based on existing experiences gained from continuing efforts in the pandemic for developing countries and low-resource settings like Bangladesh that will be helpful for teachers, researchers, and policymakers to redesign teaching-learning activities. From the suggestions of this chapter, even resource-constrained countries would get some ideas to identify appropriate online teaching-learning tools to re-organise and reuse their trivial resources.

This book describes the history and evolution of pre-primary education including the policy debates. Based on various research findings, the book explained the factors related to the development of pre-primary education in Bangladesh which include teaching-learning process, parenting, play and games, books, learning style etc. This book is written in Bengali language.

The main objective of the paper is to review the research studies conducted on competency-based student’s learning achievement in primary education in Bangladesh. The specific objectives are to:
-  find out what kind of competency-based assessments are implemented in both government and non-government sectors;
- provide a brief description of each study considering the style of annotated bibliography where study objectives, methodology, main findings and suggestions will be provided. This will also scrutinize whether the studies are technically sound;
- discuss the validity of the questionnaires and/or test items and their reliability to assess the students and to analyze the findings of the studies;
- identify the gaps in existing studies and to suggest further studies with policy implications for enhancing students’ learning system.

This book provides some thoughtful articles on the contemporary issues of Bangladesh education. Most of the writers are young in age and they all are working in education sector of Bangladesh. Through this book, one can know what your people are thinking on current education situation of Bangladesh.

The major research question was why the Sylhet division is lagging behind the other parts of the country in various educational indicators? What are the constraints (social, economic, regional, environmental, migration-related, faith-based, etc.) that put Sylhet behind other divisions? Why these constraints prevail and how these can be addressed?

Both quantitative and qualitative methods were adopted in achieving the above research objectives. Much of the quantitative information for the study came through three surveys, viz., a household survey, an educational institution survey and a community-level survey. Under educational institution survey, both primary and secondary educational institutions were covered. For the qualitative part of the investigation, four communities (villages in rural areas and mahallas in urban areas) from four different locations were selected and in-depth exploration was done on various issues related to education. In addition, available official statistics was used to supplement the qualitative and quantitative information.

Massive open online courses (MOOCs) are getting popular all over the world as it offers flexible learning opportunity from which personal and professional skills in various topics can be developed. Along with Australia, Europe, and North America, the popularity of MOOCs has already been observed in the Asian countries. Like English MOOCs, some Asian countries including Bangladesh, China, India, Japan, and South Korea have started MOOCs in their state language. However, very limited studies regarding participation patterns, motivations and completion status were found in the context of Asian languages including Bengali. The current study aims to explore the above-mentioned issues considering the context of Bengali MOOCs as evidence-based literature is missing in this area. Besides, this study purposes to find out the relationship between completion status and participation patterns and motivations in Bengali MOOCs. The descriptive survey research procedure was considered for this study and data was collected through an online survey. The registered students of four data analysis courses of the Shikkhok platform, which is the biggest among the Bengali MOOCs platforms, were considered as the sample. The data was analyzed using quantitative analysis process. The results showed that the rate of course completion in Bengali MOOCs was 32.5% and there was a positive and significant correlation between spending the time to learn the course and course completion. The study reveals that the post knowledge of the learners on the topic was higher than the prior knowledge. Moreover, the learners were motivated to learn from the Bengali MOOCs where self-directed learning and self-regulated learning motivation played a vital role. On the contrary, lack of time and deficiency of commitment to complete the course were two main factors for non-completion. Based on the result, the study mainly recommends redesigning the Shikkhok platform in an organized way like standard MOOCs platforms. Simultaneously, integration of discussion forum, assimilation of quiz and assessment system and providing certificate are other recommendations with the assumption that these procedural facilities could improve the current situation as the learners were already motivated to learn from the Bengali MOOCs.