Modernising education: Policy, technology, and market reform

While those responsible for building a comprehensive academic ecosystem for our students often debate specific topics, subject matters, and politically sensitive words, we overlook a crucial point. Even if we introduce world-class literature and ideas into our textbooks, it may still fail to improve overall education quality.

With each change in regime, our politicians often find themselves caught in what I call the "Farrukh Ahmed Conundrum"—whether to include or exclude his works. Unfortunately, even after the fall of the autocratic regime, when we should have taken a holistic approach to prioritise education, we remain stuck in the same old loop.

Few debates in our public forum have looked beyond "subjective engineering" and its political implications to focus on pragmatic discourse. This includes how we respond to market demands and calculate consequential impacts. Before addressing other agendas, we should ask why our students struggle to internalise the academic material provided to them.

The materials in our secondary and higher secondary education textbooks are sufficient to teach relevant subjects. However, there are some systemic factors at play.

I used to teach high school students using the textbook "English for Today" which encompasses a diverse array of level-appropriate topics, including local and international populations, perspectives, environment, empowerment, and diversity. Yet, my students often showed little interest in these subjects, prioritizing other seemingly more important group subjects. Conversely, Bangla was frequently neglected, leading to a noticeable decline in the articulation skills of fresh graduates over the years.

We have seen the emergence of issues such as widespread confusion between "ই" and "য়" and other fundamental errors among the educated population. This suggests that despite 12 years of mandatory education in these subjects, students acquire minimal knowledge relative to the time and resources invested. The complexity of these languages does not justify the extensive time required for learning. This issue is not merely a problem but a symptom of a more profound systemic failure in our secondary and higher secondary education system.

Where are we going wrong?

The answer is straightforward: while we have been caught up in debates over politically sensitive and subjective issues, we have almost overlooked the objective side of teaching and learning.

Primarily, I want to hold the quality of our evaluation methods accountable. In an academic environment that tends to be highly reactive, properly standardising evaluations can be the magic wand to help us improve the overall quality of education in our high schools and colleges.

What really matters to teachers and administrators is the evaluation process followed in exams like the JSC, SSC, and HSC, as the results have a direct impact on how the public perceives these institutions. This, in turn, influences the number of students who choose to apply there. Based on the level of rigour in these evaluations, schools and colleges adjust their teaching methods and prioritise certain subjects, ultimately shaping the quality of education they deliver.

The overall quality of evaluation in our public exams has declined to the point where the results have little value when it comes to higher education or gaining admission to reputable universities. If we take a closer look at these highly competitive exams, we will find that very few teachers at schools and colleges can follow through with the syllabus for these university admission tests. This is because the level of difficulty and quality of evaluation in these exams do not align with the standards used in secondary and higher secondary education, even though both are based on almost the same set of textbooks.

So, who's helping students prepare for the advanced exams?

The answer is our brightest young minds—our undergraduates—working in the informal tuition market. It is ironic, though, how politicians and public intellectuals have consistently demonised this market, pushing for policies aimed at completely abolishing it, without ever attempting to transform the market to unlock its true potential.

Despite the support from undergraduates, students are still largely confused about their path to higher education. They mostly struggle to pinpoint their problem areas and rarely have a clear sense of their purpose in pursuing a higher academic degree. This often stems from the problem of being unable to make sense of their grades.

Rarely does a ninth- or twelfth-grade student understand what it means to score 70 or 72 in physics or accounting, apart from the idea that one is a bit closer to 80 and its relative implication of doing well or poorly.

Even more mature students participating in competitive exams such as the BCS often feel unconfident due to the same issue.

However, it is not a tough nut to crack. Technologies already exist that can help students interpret their own performance by applying basic sectoral pattern analysis and offer them more clarity about where they stand. This is only possible when we can automate a significant portion of the evaluation process.

But instead of automation, we expect our teachers to manually identify the same pattern for every student, forcing them to serve in a severely underpaid profession with an overburdened schedule that rarely motivates them to look beyond what is presented before their eyes.

Recently, Ebtedai (elementary level at Madrasa) teachers protested in front of the secretariat, demanding a raise, and were beaten mercilessly by the police. I was curious about how much they make a month, and the average answer I found was Tk9,000. Needless to say, this does not even come close to the average household expenditure level here in Bangladesh.

Most private schools in Dhaka offer their teachers a range of Tk10,000-12,000 per month. It is obvious that our teachers are forced to work long hours in the informal tuition market in addition to their 8-hour jobs to get by. That poses another threat.

There is a common perception that when teachers are allowed to run private coaching centres or tutoring, they often tend to teach less in their classes at schools and pressure students to join private tutoring.

While this is not completely wrong, it begs the question: what incentives do they have to focus in classes and dive deep into a child's mind to inspire our kids?

The answer is well-known, yet the expectation persists, becoming evident with every experimental education policy we adopt. This expectation led the previous government to develop an evaluation structure that incorporated the skills and capacities of students that cannot be measured by numbers alone.

The intention was to provide a comprehensive understanding of each student. This policy required teachers to delve deeper into the nature and sophistication of their students than ever before. Despite the good intentions of policymakers, the policy was destined to fail, particularly in scenarios where teachers in rural areas are often instructed by administrators and government officials to "let the students pass," even if it means manipulating exam papers and grades to maintain an illusion of academic progress.

If we cannot pay teachers better, the least we can do is reduce their manual workload. The ed-tech industry could play a crucial role here by offering solutions to improve classroom efficiency.

However, the industry remains stuck with first-generation technologies, merely digitising classes that were once conducted physically. While interactive learning concepts and animated videos of complex topics have been developed to enhance student understanding, there has been no significant shift towards next-generation technologies that address and solve student-specific issues.

A primary reason for this stagnation is the continuous decline in foreign direct investment (FDI) within the startup ecosystem over the past few years. Local investors tend to prioritise short-term opportunities, which rarely contribute to fostering innovation. 

While major tech companies are battling over user data from both online and offline sources, we are essentially wasting millions of valuable data sets every day (yes, I'm referring to the countless exam papers that ultimately get recycled into something like the packaging for Jhalmuri).

If we were to automate our evaluation system and apply basic concepts of big data analysis to these exam papers, we could gain far more meaningful insights into our students, including a deeper understanding of their cognitive abilities.

Currently, policymakers merely react to market demands, focusing on developing academia to produce graduates who can meet immediate needs. For instance, the demand for EEE graduates peaked with the telecom boom, followed by a surge in popularity for BBA, CSE, and Textile Engineering. However, by analysing the current trends in student learning capacity, we can proactively reshape our education policies.

If we fail to strategically decide which industries to foster and develop, we risk being at the mercy of market fluctuations. If major companies decide to relocate, our graduates could find themselves without jobs.

This calls for a thorough analysis of the learning patterns and progress of our secondary and higher secondary students. By aligning university admissions with the national strategy for industry development, we can eliminate the policy-level myopia that plagues our policymakers. This alignment must begin with the standardisation of our evaluation system and active efforts to reduce the burdens on teachers by automating evaluation processes on a large scale.

Evaluative remarks must be meaningful and reflect associated data on necessary actions for students. Such analysis does not require cutting-edge technology.

Analysing this data will also help us understand the performance levels of our teachers and administrators, enabling the implementation of modern and advanced human resource management practices, which are currently lacking.

The informal tuition market, valued at $6 billion dollars even before COVID-19, according to educationists like Prof Syed Anwar Hossain, is the most relevant informal market in the sector. Only strict data-centric policy development can help integrate this market into our formal economy.

Interestingly, undergraduates working in this informal market are unlikely to join the current formal setup within the sector. By adopting a smart formalisation policy, we can address the long-standing issue of a shortage of quality teachers.

The informal market has remained separate from policy measures for years. However, it is now evident that this market can be instrumentalised symbiotically to transform the sector's health. The government must help startups channel FDI into the ed-tech ecosystem and ensure financial regulatory bodies are prepared for new challenges.

Startups in this sector need long-term investment to create a healthier market. Market leaders will be those who bet on behavioural change rather than seeking instant profits.

After all, we are a country where families spend the most in South Asia on their children's education. Such behaviour will undoubtedly reward new initiatives if investments are made wisely.

Al-Fazly Rabby is a graduate from the Department of Public Administration, University of Dhaka. A policy enthusiast, he worked within the edtech ecosystem for 6+ years, advocating for a more humane and data-driven education policy adoption

(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views)