The move to bring a wholesale change in the recruitment process of non-government teachers for Secondary educational institutions under the MPO (Monthly Payment Orders) scheme appears to have found the right direction. For many, this is a monumental step that, if pursued seriously, is sure to leave a positive impact on the quality of teaching in non-government secondary schools, colleges and madrashas in the country. It has been learnt that the Non-Government Teachers' Registration & Certification Authority (NTRCA) of the Ministry of Education has recently recommended recruitment of more than 38,000 secondary school teachers against vacant posts under the MPO scheme. The procedure followed in the recruitment process was online merit test, which for obvious reasons has rendered it transparent and hassle-free -- much to the satisfaction of the job-seekers as well as those involved with the huge activity.
For quite sometime now, there have been talks that mostly centred around the rationale of dishing out massive amounts of money from the state coffer in the form of MPO as salary to the teaching staff of non-government secondary educational institutions without thoroughly scrutinising the quality of teachers working there. There were reports of teachers many of whom had neither the required academic qualifications nor were they otherwise competent enough to do their jobs. The changes in the curriculum in the recent years require competence of teachers as the most crucial factor to make education meaningful. However, as the MPO scheme expanded over time with increasing number of beneficiaries all over the country, the government was in a fix to discipline the situation in an appropriate, albeit stringent manner. At the root of the controversy was the legitimacy of spending public money which looked like populism of sorts. Clearly, it was the way teachers got recruited and the foul play allegedly associated with the process that caused dissent among many quarters, including the academics.
Now, what the NTRCA has done is not only laudable, as reported by many, the important thing here is the likely benefit that should emerge out of the transparent system of recruitment based on merit and academic qualifications. It may be recalled that the Awami League government in its first term had revived the MPO scheme -- suspended during the previous government -- as part of its electoral pledges. Subsequently, more schools were brought under its coverage, but what was not attended to was putting in place a mechanism of recruiting competent and qualified teachers.
Currently, 26340 schools, colleges and madrashas receive MPO, and the number of teachers is around 400,000. The institutions not listed for MPO are well over 5,000 with a pool of, reportedly, 80,000 teachers. It would take more than TK 24 billion a year to include this large number of institutions in the MPO scheme. Money, however, should not hold up the process, but spending this huge amount must ensure quality teaching. If this can be done, the spending would be justified as worth the purpose. The NTRCA has set an example as a starter in this regard.