A resident of remote Bunduk Bhanga union in Rangamati district, the government-run school she was attending was also located far from her humble home.
However, thanks to a children’s learning centre (CLC) in her village established by Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), an NGO, Urmi’s dream of an education was revived and sustained.
Today, four years older and a bright young student of grade 5, she is back at the school she had dropped out of.
“When I was forced to drop out of school over financial problems and the long distance, I didn’t think I could start again. But Ahsania Mission assisted me to start schooling again,” says Urmi.
DAM volunteers go door-to-door in remote, hard-to-reach areas to motivate villagers to enroll their children, particularly targeting out-of-school children and dropouts - in their CLCs. Urmi was enrolled at a CLC named Dhamaye Chara at Bunduk Bhanga union.
“After receiving various forms of assistance, I enrolled at Dhamaye Chara in class 2 on January 7, 2016,” Urmi added.
The CLCs are part of a project to impart quality education to out-of-school children and dropouts particularly from the disadvantaged groups through multigrade teaching and learning. It also intends to provide remedial services to the slow learners of targeted government and registered primary schools.
Multigrade teaching occurs in primary education when a teacher has to teach two or more primary school student grades in the same class. Multigrade classes comprise students of different ages, grades and abilities in the same group.
Promoting and upscaling quality education through implementing community-based non-formal primary education and networking them with formal education were the core themes of the ‘Unique Intervention for Quality Primary Education’, or UNIQUE II project funded by the EU.
Children’s learning activities were cultivated through the children’s learning centres (CLC). These CLCs provided support to children aged 6-12.
The multigrade teaching-learning system allows every single learner to adhere to a flexible routine for study. A learner, therefore, enjoys the opportunity to read texts of any class according to his/her personal competence in a given subject.
Most importantly, the aim is to allow students to be transferred into the formal education system, through the network of government-run schools, once they are done at the CLC. Ideally, in case of dropouts, this can happen without the child losing any years of schooling, and with their core competencies undiminished.
As was the case with Urmi, who is the eldest among three siblings her father, Bimol Chakma, takes a much better view of education for his children today and hopes that his other two children can also avail education in Urmi’s footsteps through the CLC run by DAM.
He believes that such projects should continue in the remote areas. “Otherwise our children cannot continue their studies due to various problems here,” Bimol said. The UNIQUE II project however, is nearing its end.
Reaching out to hard-to-reach children was high in the list of policy priorities for the project funded by the European Union (EU). As part of this support, DAM implemented the intervention under the UNIQUE-II project for dropouts and out-of-school children in two phases starting from 2006 to 2018 followed by a short extension till March 31, 2019.
Over the period, about 300,000 (3 lakh) dropouts and out-of-school children in 442 unions of 84 upazilas in 26 districts of the country were provided with quality primary education under the project.
On the verge of wrapping up, GF Hamim, the UNIQUE II project director at DAM, indicated to UNB that there was still a lot of work to be done.
“There are around five million children in the country who still remain deprived of education. We should bring them under education institutions. We are ready to help the government with our experience for engaging them in institutions in future," he said.
As part of the last batch at their CLCs, some 16,500 out of 17,421 students were transferred to the state-run schooling system in January last.