School dropouts high in Dhunat

The Daily Star report that around 2,500 students have dropped out of school in the last three years in Bogra's Dhunat upazilla, due to extreme poverty and child marriage, is a cause for worry. While the government has had significant success in achieving high enrolment rates in primary schools for both boys and girls, it is crucial that this trend is sustained. Primary students must have the opportunity to continue to the middle and secondary levels of education. 

The report further states that although parents are aware of the importance of education they are forced to pull out their children from school because they cannot afford the study materials. Poverty resulting from land erosion that leads to landlessness, compels parents to make their children work or get their minor daughters married off to relieve themselves of an extra mouth to feed.

This is hardly the scenario we can allow to persist when we are aiming to become a middle income country. The government must amplify its efforts to reduce poverty in the most remote and impoverished areas where more and more children are discontinuing school. Dhunat may well be one of many other upazillas in the country where this alarming trend continues. 

It goes without saying that the government and organisations must work together to create more jobs and greater opportunities to set up small scale businesses. If government schools are supposed to provide free education till secondary school there should not be extra charges for anything else. Unless we address the root causes of the increase in school drop outs, more and more children will be deprived of the light of gaining knowledge. That is something that will be a huge setback for Bangladesh's developmental aspirations.