Education in the new budget: Good news and bad news

The finance minister, presenting his fourth consecutive annual budget for FY 2022-23, had a daunting task of balancing economic recovery and throwing a life-line to the poor struggling to keep their head above the water. Their numbers may have doubled as a result of the pandemic-induced job and income loss, and the out-of- reach price tags of basic needs, which have been aggravated further by the fall-out of the Ukraine war. 

The good news for education is that the allocations and expenditure pattern have been maintained in the face of adversities. The bad news is that once gain the expectation of a proportionately higher allocation and a priority to much needed educational reform have been dashed. Educators have been urging that the budget could signal such change.

Out of a total proposed national budget of Tk678,064 crores for FY23, the allocation for the education sector is 81,449 crore or 12% of the total, compared to 11.9% in the current year. In terms of GDP ratio, it remains around 2%, one of the lowest in the world – far below the recommended minimum of 4-6% of GDP and 20% of the national budget.

The budget speech of the finance minister promises a wide range of initiatives for "science-based education and development of education infrastructure." He mentions a litany of accomplishments, essentially within the present pattern of expenditures to keep the educational operations going. He talked about recruitment of teachers, distribution of books, paid stipends, installation of ICT equipment in schools, expanded TVET training, and initiatives to introduce blended instruction, combining distance and in-person lessons.

While one can be thankful for keeping the schools open and running, educators and parents would like to see better performance from these investments and significant improvement in children's learning outcomes.  The policy makers may argue that in an exceptional emergency, we should be thankful for the small mercy of maintaining the status quo.

Children who have dropped out of school during the pandemic and seek help to be brought back to classrooms may not be happy with the small mercies. For those still in school, struggling to keep up with their lessons, and looking for support such as tutoring or special classes to bridge the learning gap, will not be satisfied with what is on offer. 

The long hiatus in normal education activities due to the pandemic has placed students and educational institutions in the midst of extraordinarily difficult challenge of learning loss and the need to undertake a recovery and remedial programme. 

For instance, children who were in class five at the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 are in class seven now, skipping two school years and largely unprepared for their new lessons. Educators have suggested a four- point recovery and remedial plan -- a rapid assessment of core skill levels of students; a remedial plan for up to two years to help them to catch- up with the losses; technical and financial support to teachers and schools to implement the remedial plan; and a working group involving parents, communities and NGOs in each school to support and carry out the recovery- remedial plan. 

As far as we know, the authorities may not have proposed specific budget lines for these activities. They now need to adjust their expenditure plan to support these urgent activities. They should find a way to include and support non-MPO schools in the recovery plan. All of this may mean putting the burner back on some planned activities such as rolling out a new school curriculum. A successfully implemented remedial plan will lay the ground for the intended curricular reform.   

Educators have argued and hoped for a recovery and remedial plan for education to help 40 million students catch up with the losses suffered from a learning hiatus that has run into a third academic year. Unesco, Unicef, World Bank and others have warned that for low income countries like Bangladesh this situation portends a generational disaster, unless effective remedial actions are taken.   

The education challenge is arguably as much about meagre funding as about managing resources and deciding on priorities and strategies to make the system function better. This is a task of the education authorities – the two ministries and three divisions in the education sector. They have to make the case for larger budgets with credible plans and programmes which would address the public concerns about quality, equity and inclusion objectives of the education system. This discourse should have happened several months ago through open dialogue with civil society and as part of a medium term education development plan discussed and prepared in a participatory manner. This is not the practice followed, but never too late to begin. 

Dr Manzoor Ahmed is emeritus professor at the Brac University, chair of Bangladesh ECD Network (BEN), vice-chair of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), and member of international Advisory Committee of the Yidan Education Prize Foundation.