Increased budget for ensuring quality education and teaching, particularly more investment in technical and vocational education and training (TVET), were underscored at a programme Saturday to fit in the fast-changing world.
Speakers at the event also urged the government to take time-befitting policies and allocate requisite funds to take advantage of a unique window of demographic dividend.
The discussion programme, titled 'Education and Human Resource Development: Where We Are?', was jointly organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), and Education Watch at a convention hall in Dhaka's Gulshan-1 area.
Planning Minister MA Mannan addressed the programme as the chief guest. Member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on the Ministry of Social Welfare Aroma Dutta was the special guest while CPD Executive Director Dr Fahmida Khatun also spoke at the event, presided over by Education Watch Chairperson Dr Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad.
At the meet, moderated by CAMPE executive director Rasheda K Choudhury, CPD research fellow Muntasir Kamal presented the keynote paper. British Deputy High Commissioner Javed Patel, UNICEF Bangladesh deputy country representative Veera Mendonca and First Secretary and Team Leader (Education & Human Development) at the Delegation of the European Union in Bangladesh Dr Hans Lambrecht also addressed the programme.
Dr Khatun said without developing good, skilled and competent human resources, it would be very hard for Bangladesh to achieve the milestones of sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030 and become a developed country by 2041.
Besides, the country will also need to deal with the challenges to emerge after graduating from the least- developed countries (LDCs) group in 2026.
"To achieve those development milestones and overcome challenges in post-LDC era, budget allocation for education is very important, so is effective utilisation of funds," she said.
She also feels that Bangladesh also needs to improve productivity of its human resources to compete with other countries in the free-trade era.
Referring to minimal budget allocation to education sector, the CPD executive director noted that major chunk of the allocation for education is spent to pay salaries and infrastructure development while enhancing quality of education is often neglected.
Terming quality of teachers a major concern, she said, "Teaching shouldn't be the last option of employment but, unfortunately, the tendency is observed in the country."
More budget allocation is required in education sector to draw attention of best human resources to education sector to improve the quality of education, she added.
In the presentation, Mr Kamal said total public expenditure on education was 1.6 per cent of GDP in 1990 which rose to about 2.0 per cent in 2000, and since then, it has been hovering around this level.
However, after the rebasing of GDP (base year: 2015-16), the share came down to 1.4 per cent in FY 2021-22, which is not commensurate with the country's development aspirations, particularly in view of the upcoming LDC graduation and attaining the SDGs.
He also noted that during the COVID-19 pandemic, closure of in-person classes in schools for 18 months without a robust alternative delivery mechanism exacerbated the situation further.
In his speech, the planning minister said, "We need to invest more on education, but due to many reasons, it hasn't been at the desired level."
Emphasising the need for rearranging budgetary allocations, he said it is a matter of political decision to restructure the budget to provide more funds to education but there have been many competing interests barring that move.
There are also concerns about well spending of allocated funds because of inefficiency of implementation authority, he said, adding it's true that there are problems but at the same time efforts are there too to resolve the setbacks.
Ms Mendonca said, "We deeply care about Bangladesh and care about investing here so that the country can rise to its fullest potential; for that investment in children and their education is important."
Bangladesh only has a short window of 15 years to utilise its unique demographic dividend which requires immediate concentration from the policymakers, she observed.
Most of the budget allocated for education is spent in March-June quarter, which raises question about making funds available in time and its use in right way, she said, adding: allocating funds in time is very crucial to get highest benefits from different initiatives.
Meanwhile, Ms Choudhury said education must be one most priority sector in the national budget in a bid to recover from the pandemic- induced losses.
Besides, improving the quality of education should be in the forefront of development agenda in the upcoming years, she told the meet.
She said the education sector often competes with energy sector, subsidy in different sectors, safety-net programmes etc to get budgetary allocation, which should end.
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