‘PEC, JSC exams are making for increased memorisation’

Dr Mohammad Tariq Ahsan, professor at the Institute of Education and Research (IER) in Dhaka University, and also a member of the Curriculum Development and Revision Core Committee (CDRCC), talks about why the PECE and JSC exams should be scrapped in an interview with Mohiuddin Alamgir of The Daily Star.

The government recently said there would be no Junior School Certificate (JSC) exams after Class 8 and the Primary Education Completion (PEC) and equivalent exams this year. What is your take on it?

I welcome this decision. Educationists in Bangladesh have been arguing for scrapping these exams permanently for a while now. We should go ahead and do it so that these exams don't take place in the future.

Why do the educationists want these exams scrapped?

Bangladesh's education system is memorisation-based, and these exams, which mark the completion of Class 5 and Class 8, respectively, have made memorisation all the more deep-rooted. They have also given a boost to the commercialisation of education via coaching centres, guidebooks and notes.

These exams were introduced in 2009 and 2010. Since then, how have they impacted children?

These exams have already had negative impacts on the psychosocial and emotional development of our children. We want and need creative, productive and skilled people in the country – people who will be able to perform their own duties and can have an impact on the development of society. Creative human beings who will be innovative and inventive. But an education system based on memorisation cannot produce such skilled and creative human resources.

The PEC and JSC exams have economic repercussions, too. Although it is said that primary education is free of cost and mandatory, after the introduction of these exams, students' dependency on coaching and notes has increased significantly, which increased out-of-pocket expenditure for their guardians. This out-of-pocket expenditure is high, because there is an unhealthy competition among parents about their children getting the highest grades in these exams. A study by the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), conducted four to five years ago, showed that a parent needed to spend Tk 4,000-5,000 per month on coaching and guidebooks for each PEC exam candidate.

These exams are also putting mental pressure on the students as they are pushed into the unhealthy competition of getting the highest marks in the tests. If a child cannot get the desired result, their confidence level is severely impacted, which negatively affects their mental and emotional development.

There is another issue: unethical practices are increasing among parents and teachers over these exams. Cheating takes place in the exams, and teachers are tutoring students privately instead of teaching lessons properly in the classroom. In the past, we also witnessed incidents such as question leaks during primary exams. And a nexus of some teachers and guardians were involved in question paper leaks.

Primary education is the foundation-laying level of education. As children at the primary level are suffering mental pressure and seeing such unethical activities, what kind of effects will these have on them as they move on to the higher levels of their education, and in life in general?

The impact of the unethical activities is that these students eventually become desensitised to such practices. We cannot curb corruption because we cannot raise a generation that has strong ethical values. This is causing us permanent damage, because these students are growing up to be unproductive and unskilled people. One of the lifelines of our economy is remittance earned by expatriate Bangladeshis. Almost all of them are unskilled. If they were skilled, we could have earned 10 times more remittance than we do now. There is a shortage of mid-level managerial professionals. To fill up this vacuum, foreigners are hired in these positions in our country. The amount of money these foreign workers are taking from us is almost the same amount of remittance we are earning. With our education system in its current state, we cannot create the manpower needed to fulfil the demand of the global market, nor the local market.

We don't have that many patents. Our education system is hardly research-friendly, and does not provide scopes for our children to develop into creative individuals. We needed inquiry-based, experience-based, problem-solving-based learning, but our education is memorisation-based. Our students can hardly develop the capacity for questioning and critical thinking, leadership and cooperative skills.

The world is moving towards automation in sectors such as agriculture and ready-made garments (RMG). With these changes, many existing jobs will be abolished, and new kinds of jobs will be created. In this new era, no one is interested in the certificates you have; rather, employers look at what you can do and what kind of hands-on training you have.

In Bangladesh, 80 percent of students who enrolled at pre-primary level drop out before university. As a result, many of these students neither become knowledge producers, nor do they become skilled manpower. We need to transform our memorisation-based education system into one that can produce creative and skilled manpower.

Government officials often argue that PEC and JSC exams lessen students' fear about the later public examinations and determine scholarship recipients. What is your take on this?

This is not a logical argument right now. The new curriculum has proposed changes in the public exam system. In the new curriculum, we proposed reducing paper-and-pencil-based exams. We proposed that exams be held to determine students' proficiencies, and be more assignment-based and focused on problem-solving methods. There will be continuous assessment during the whole learning period.

In the current system, we are evaluating a student through a three-hour exam. These exams were never designed to evaluate a student as a whole.

Scholarships can be given on the basis of the creativity shown by students. Special arrangements like Maths Olympiad, Language Olympiad and others can be helpful to determine eligibility for scholarships. Across the globe, there are initiatives for assisting the development of advanced-level students.

What kind of reforms are you proposing for public exams in the upcoming curriculum?

The majority of countries are reforming their curricula, targeting experience-based and competency-based education. They also reduced public exams and fixed term exams after Class 10 or 12. We also proposed not having any public exams before Class 10 in the new curriculum. There will be no written exams till Class 3, but there will be formative assessment for the students.

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How will the evaluation be done?

We are for reducing the use of paper and pencil in the overall evaluation process. Students' capacity of proficiency and hands-on training should be increased. There will be some kind of tests for classical subjects like Bangla, English, maths and science. Learning time evaluation, continuous assessment will take place for the rest of the subjects. The evaluation will be formative assessment and by multiple stakeholders, including teachers, guardians and communities.

Are our teachers ready for these changes?

Preparing our teachers for these changes is really important. Without preparing the teachers, these reforms will not work. Skill enhancement, change of attitude of the teachers are also needed. An extensive training package has been planned, and it is being implemented. Previously, we had a training module where trainers of teachers were prepared first, and then they trained the teachers. Such modules minimise the quality of training. The new plan is that teachers will have some self-preparation by using web portals and apps, so that they don't go into the training sessions without knowing what to expect. Teachers will also get on-the-job mentoring. For such support, a mentoring group would be created in each upazila.

Future teachers, who will join in a few years, will get foundation training. Teachers who will join four or five afterwards, pre-service teacher education is also in the plan.

If we want quality teachers to bring qualitative change in our education, we will need to ensure their dignity as well as lucrative salaries. A small education budget is a big challenge to these goals.