Education
Schools to get over 95% textbooks by Dec 31: Minister
Education Minister Dipu Moni on Thursday said more than 95 per cent textbooks will reach primary and secondary schools across the country by December 31.
“The remaining books will be delivered by January 7. Students will get their textbooks in time,” Dipu Moni said while visiting a printing press at Matuail in the capital.
Dipu Moni said the binding of over 17 crore textbooks has already been completed but some might remain incomplete. “However, we’ll be able to distribute those among students in the first week of January.”
However, it is not possible to arrange any ‘textbook festival’ this time too due to the pandemic, said the minister, adding that these textbooks will be distributed in classrooms.
HSC exams begin in Bangladesh
After a delay of nearly seven months due to the pandemic, the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and equivalent exams for the academic session 2020-21 began on Thursday, following all Covid-safety protocols.
Some 13,99,690 students are eligible to take the high-stakes exams this year. The number was 13,65,789 last year -- a 2.48% rise.
While 11,38,017 candidates are supposed to appear for the HSC exams under nine general education boards, 1,13,114 are eligible to take the Alim exams under the Madrasa Education Board and 1,48,503 the vocational exams under the Bangladesh Technical Education Board this year.
Read: Maintain health protocols to keep HSC exams undisturbed: Dipu Moni
Besides, 406 students are slated to appear for the HSC exams from abroad. Some 2,621 centres have been designated as HSC exam hubs across the country.
This year, the SSC and the HSC exams could not be held as per schedule due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Subsequently, the government decided to hold the exams with shortened syllabi.
The SSC and equivalent exams that began on November 14 concluded on November 23 while the HSC and equivalent exams will conclude on December 30.
Overdue HSC exams begin Thursday
After a 7-month delay caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) and its equivalent examinations for the academic session 2020-21 will begin on Thursday, maintaining health protocols. Some 13,99,690 students are expected to take the HSC and equivalent examinations this year while the number was 13,65,789 last year. The number of candidates has increased by 33,901 with a growth rate of 2.48 percent.
Read:Maintain health protocols to keep HSC exams undisturbed: Dipu Moni About 11,38,017 candidates will sit for the HSC exams under nine general education boards, 1,13,114 for Alim exams under Madrasa Education Board and 1,48,503 for vocational exams under Bangladesh Technical Education Board this year. Besides, 406 students will take part in the examinations from abroad. Some 2,621 centres are ready to hold the HSC examinations across the country. This year the SSC and the HSC examinations could not be held as per the schedules due to the Covid-19 pandemic and then the government decided to hold the examinations with shortened syllabuses.
The SSC and equivalent examinations that began on November 14 concluded on November 23while the HSC exams will conclude on December 30. Besides, all coaching centres across the country will remain shut from November 25 to January 3 ahead of the exams. Educational institutions across the country had remained closed since March last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the closure was extended several times. Finally, the government reopened schools and colleges on September 13 following an improvement in the Covid-19 situation.
Read:Coaching centres to remain shut for 39 days as HSC exams begin on Dec 2 Last year’s HSC examinees were evaluated on the basis of their results of JSC and SSC exams, a decision which received a mixed reaction. Education Minister Dipu Moni has urged all to maintain health protocols so that the HSC examinations can be held without any disruption. “Concerns are growing as the new variant of coronavirus, ‘Omicron’, has been identified. It’s more infectious. We need to remain very careful,” she told a programme at Chandpur Press Club on Tuesday evening. The minister, however, expressed dissatisfaction as many people are not wearing face masks. “We should follow the hygiene rules and avoid public gatherings to contain the spread of the virus so that we don’t have to postpone the HSC exams.”
Dipu Moni urges Dhaka University to adopt an academic master plan
Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni on Wednesday urged the Dhaka University authorities to conduct more researches on socio-economic fields and establish cooperation with reputed foreign universities for academic excellence.
This can be done under an academic master plan, she said while speaking at the centenary celebration of the country’s oldest university.
Read: Degrees not enough, achieve global standards, President tells DU students
She said the century-old university needs to restore its past glory through imparting quality education and conducting international standard researches.
She said that making a master plan on the academic programme is more important that a master plan on physical development.
The minister said the government will cooperate with the university if it adopts the academic master plan.
'Education, learning no longer limited to boundaries'
In this age of globalisation, education and learning are no longer limited to a certain boundary.
Now and then, different sessions, webinars and workshops are being organised virtually, where international experts and academics shed light on different issues related to the overall development and future-fit skills, Dr Sandeep Ananthanarayanan, group chief executive officer of STS Group, told UNB.
"Students should explore every opportunity to learn and grow. Different professional networking sites can also help them gather insights about current market trends," he said.
"Workshops organised by study centres and universities can also help broaden the outlook of the students. When you are well aware of the changing scenario and have the necessary skills, it will be much easier to achieve your goals."
Read: Sohopathi: An Emerging Online Education Platform in Bangladesh
"Also, we are living in an age when only degrees are not enough to get you a good and respectable job. The market is very competitive now. Employers look for many things in a prospective candidate, including future-fit skills that are necessary to survive the changes thrust upon us by the pandemic and the subsequent digital transformation."
"So, when you are planning your career, you must keep in mind that only earning a degree is not going to help. Rather, you have to keep tabs on the changes going around you and in the market and develop skills accordingly to stay ahead of others. Different sessions arranged by international universities can be a good opportunity," Sandeep said.
"Meanwhile, the pandemic has resulted in a very unfavourable situation for students and job-seekers. Geographical barriers and restrictions imposed due to coronavirus have compounded the situation further. So, people are having trouble getting suitable jobs. At such a time, you need the right degree with the right set of skills."
"When you are pursuing higher education, you must have the right insights and skills in your possession to thrive in a particular environment defying all odds. Moreover, it is important to develop different future-fit skills in the backdrop of changing market scenarios to flourish your career and excel in the study as well."
Read: Govt ‘eyes partnership’ with non-formal education sector
In this regard, workshops in skill development can play great roles as the students get the chance to acquire new skills and gather knowledge, said Sandeep.
Also, owing to the pandemic, many countries halted educational opportunities and overseas programmes for quite some time. However, with the vaccination underway in full swing, many others are opening their doors once again.
But it is often seen that many students from Bangladesh cannot pursue higher degrees abroad because of different constraints, including financial burden and sudden shock created by a different education system.
So, many students are deprived of quality higher education. In many countries, foreign universities open study centres to facilitate the aspiring students and create opportunities for them to seek a higher degree from a foreign university.
"There are many public and private universities in the country which are offering different degrees to aspiring students. Most recently, Monash College Australia has started its operation in Bangladesh, which will contribute to developing the higher education scenario in the country in terms of academic reputation, international faculty ratio and research opportunities," said Sandeep.
The STS Group's group chief executive officer has worked with eminent professors from world-class universities such as Wharton, Yale, Kellogg and Stanford and also the co-author of the best-seller "CULT: Strategy and Leadership & Business Strategy – Ruthlessly Redefined" and the author of "Power Business Strategies."
STS Group operates DPS STS School, International School Dhaka and Monash College-UCB Center – Bangladesh's first and the only government-approved international education institution.
High sense of values, pluralism vital to become future leaders: Julian Drinkall
The high sense of values, ethics, pluralism, public service goals and contributions to communities are some of the key drivers that need to be taken into consideration while educating children to be the leaders of Bangladesh and the world, according to a globally renowned educationist.
“We’re very keen on these areas and these’re all big drivers for us -- wonderful education, wonderful values,” educationist Julian Drinkall told UNB in an interview.
Drinkall studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University followed by his Master of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, and Master of Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School.
Also read: Govt plans to raise number of classes in schools, colleges: Dipu Moni
Drinkall brings years of executive leadership experience across the fields of education, non-profit governance, strategy and media.
Sohopathi: An Emerging Online Education Platform in Bangladesh
In this age of information technology, when the internet has spread its wings in every single sector of human life, an EdTech startup found out the loophole in the Bangladeshi education system and started an online education platform for academic students. We are talking about "Sohopathi," a visionary education platform in Bangladesh. However, the platform might not be familiar to many, but they are growing silently. Although EdTech is a hot topic worldwide, many entrepreneurs do not dare to venture into this field due to a lack of knowledge or capital. The founders of Sohopathi took the dare and successfully managed the fund! Let's explore more details about Sohopathi.
What is Sohopathi?
Officially launched in 2019, Sohopathi is basically an online education platform to facilitate students and mentors. It is a place where anyone can learn or teach lessons online on different SSC and HSC level subjects.
Sohopathi aims to provide personalized education to students online. They provide the service the experienced mentors from top universities such as BUET, DU, SUST, NSU, KUET, and more. Further, they have specialized mentors for each subject. Currently, Sohopathi has more than 70 mentors. Further, the web platform has videos on different subjects and different chapters.
Read: Distance Learning: Grab foreign degrees online while staying in Bangladesh
How does Sohopathi emerge?
Sohopathi was an initiative by a group of BUET and MIST students. All the founders were educators when they were in their undergrad. So, they used to visit different suburban and rural places, and they felt that the majority of the students did not have access to quality education.
Furthermore, they also realized that the student-teacher ratio is quite skewed, and as a result, teachers cannot pay attention to each student. Hence, the students outside of Dhaka city miss the quality education. With that note, the founders started a Q & A based Facebook group and pages, where the students can ask about anything, and they would supply the right answer. Gradually they got a huge response.
Later they appointed a group of volunteers consisting of 60 members, who used to answer the questions in the Facebook group. Back in 2017, they were quite popular, and within two years, they built a database of 15,000 questions. In their early days, it was known as Online Sohopathi.
Read 20 Most Promising Education Start-Ups in Bangladesh
The idea of launching a platform came from that Facebook group based on academic questions and answers. Although they began their journey in 2017, Sohopathi incorporated in 2020 as Mainframe Lab.
They launched the website in the same year, but they did not have any business model for the first two years. Nevertheless, they were not sure if anyone would be willing to pay for their services as it was not
common during those days. But, their confusion got clear when 100 students paid for a programming workshop they took at Dhaka University.
Read Visa’s Fintech Initiative for Bangladesh: New Opportunities for Start-ups?
Later they introduced a paid online model test option for the students looking for admission to universities, which led them to earn revenue and improve their business model. Later they started personalized support for the students for a fee. That's how the mentor service emerged. However, the Q&A section is still free.
How do they work?
Back in 2019, Sohopathi used to run through the earnings from paid online exams, workshops, and other sources. Later in the same year, they rented a co-working space in Daffodil Business Incubator Center. Later they applied to the Grameenphone pre-accelerator in 2019 and eventually got selected, which was a turning point to shape their business. Further, they competed in Tiger IT Innovation Challenge 2019 and earned top three positions, and received investment from Tiger IT Foundation.
Read: Top 10 Free Online Digital Marketing Courses in 2021
They already had mentor service, and later they launched the B2B platform to collaborate with the coaching centers and eventually sold the service to several coaching centers. It later included the main model of Sohopathi. However, they didn't have an actual operation until September 2020.
The Sohipathi platform is fully automated now, and students can purchase the courses they want and start the course after making payment. Throughout this process, no human interaction is needed.
For the mentors, Sohopathi has a commission-based model as well as a fixed payment model. For the commission-based structure, the platform takes a certain percentage from the mentors' earnings, and the rest of the amount directly goes to the mentors' bank account without any manual interaction. The fixed payment model is applied to the courses with big batches.
Read Agro-Tech Startups in Bangladesh: Tech revolution in Agriculture Sector
When it comes to the sales side, they have a full-proof pipeline to find, acquire and register students. They use calls, SMS, and other promotional activities. Sohopathi has more than 1000 campus ambassadors in different schools and colleges. Mostly the ambassadors are school and college students who help the company with marketing and sales. The ambassadors get good incentives to bring the leads.
For the content side, they are an open platform in which students, mentors, and anyone can submit content. However, they had an unorganized content library, but now they have an organized content library as the company hired people for video editing and illustration. That's how their revenues have grown to almost five times since 2020.
For the B2B segment, Sohopathi has an online exam solution for educational organizations.
Read Can E-Learning Substitute Classroom Learning?
Pricing model
Sohopathi has a different price for different segments. For instance, students can have the option to take courses for Tk. 500/month to Tk. 5000/month. The differentiation happens due to the personalized service as the student will need to pay more for the personalized service.
Future Plan
Sohopathi is proceeding with a solid plan as they have a target to collaborate with 50 top-level high schools or colleges from 30 districts in the next 1 year. Further, they also aim to create a network of top 3,000 educators across the country. The company also plans to introduce skill-based courses in the future.
Read: Robi-10 Minute School launches exam preparation course for grades 6-9
Apart from these long-term goals, the founders also aim to increase the daily app users to 50,000. Through all these targets, they want to get ready to raise VC investment word $1.5-2 million by the end of 2022.
Further, the organization also aims to improve the platform gradually while they integrate online exams and mentorship programs for educational institutions.
Final words
While the Sohopathi develops its business, they face challenges too. The main challenge they face is the reach, and they want to improve it by reaching more students. Now, Sohopathi is a team of 20 members who have expertise in different domains, from software development to marketing. The company has more than 3500 active recurring paid users. Their B2B platform has collaborated with 5 educational institutions, and most of them are located outside of Dhaka. So, the founders see a good prospect of providing quality education outside of Dhaka.
Read Best Banks for Student Credit Card in Bangladesh
Govt ‘eyes partnership’ with non-formal education sector
Director General of the Bureau of Non-Formal Education (BNFE) Md Ataur Rahman has said the government is eager to work in the non-formal education sector on the basis of a long-term partnership with BRAC, an international development organization.
BRAC's long-term activities for Rohingyas and the host community are positive, praiseworthy and realistic, and the government wants to utilize those experiences of BRAC, he said.
Rahman made the remarks while addressing a discussion at a hotel in Cox’s Bazar town on Saturday evening, said a media release on Sunday.
The Education Sector of BRAC under Humanitarian Crisis Management Programme (HCMP) organized the discussion titled ‘Education Activities under HCMP’.
The BNFE DG visited the district to inspect the education activities, taken up by BRAC, at Rohingya camps.
Md Ripon Kabir Laskar, Deputy Director (Admin) of BNFE; Safi Rahman Khan, Director of Education Programme of BRAC; Md Mahamud Hasan, Chief of Party of the same programme; Khan Mohammad Ferdous, Lead of Education Sector under HCMP; and others were present.
The BNFE DG stressed the importance of innovating new ideas by utilizing the experiences of field level BRAC employees regarding the non-formal education for Rohingyas and the host community.
BRAC brought 69,423 children (aged between 3-14) under non-formal education at Rohingya camps. Besides, the organization is working for 3,759 children of the host community, he said, adding that the government and BRAC can work jointly on innovation by utilizing BRAC’s experiences.
He said the government will provide necessary support regarding the innovation and enhancing capacity of education employees.
Earlier, the DG visited the BRAC Learning Centre at No. 15 and 16 Rohingya camps where he talked to Rohingya children, studying from level 1-4, their parents, guardians and teachers.
Child marriage was an epidemic within the pandemic in Bangladesh
The period covered by the pandemic has witnessed another epidemic, child marriage, returning to some areas of Bangladesh as educational institutes were closed to contain the spread of the coronavirus. Poor families in the country's hinterland, who once were convinced to send their children to school by the school meals program eased the burden on them to feed.
However, the covid-19 is contained or not during this period, the education of the girl students has been stopped due to child marriage.
Especially in Kurigram, the rate of child marriage is increasing rapidly, cannot be contained in any way. The girl students of this area are now living in their husband's houses at an early age.
Read: Child marriage rates soar in Cox's Bazar in the shadow of pandemic
More than 500 schoolgirls belonging to 43 educational institutions of Fulbari Upazila were married off during this pandemic, confirmed Upazila Secondary Education Officer Md Abdul Hai.
The highest number of child marriages were reported of students in the Borovita Girls' High School and Borovita High School in Borovita union of the upazila.
Around 87 girls in Borovita Girls' High School and 55 girls including three SSC examinees in Borovita High School have been the victim of child marriage, said the headmasters of the schools.
Read Initiative launched to end child marriage in Bangladesh
Md Matiur Rahman Khandaker, the headmaster of Borovita Girls' High School said, "Based on preliminary information, we have received data of marriages of 87 students of 6th to 10th grade and SSC candidates."
Of course, it was not possible to go to every house and get information about the marriage. In many cases, the news has been confirmed by classmates and neighbours.
"However, the actual number may increase further," said the headmaster.
Read Patuakhali child marriage: case filed against UP chairman and five others
He also said the Upazila Secondary Education Officer has been informed through a detailed letter containing names and other information.
Life in a madrasa as Afghanistan enters new era
In a school in a remote corner of the Afghan capital, a cacophony of children’s voices recite Islam’s holiest book.
Sunshine streams through the windows of the Khatamul Anbiya madrasa, where a dozen young boys sit in a circle under the tutelage of their teacher, Ismatullah Mudaqiq.
The students are awake by 4:30 a.m. and start the day with prayers. They spend class time memorizing the Quran, chanting verses until the words are ingrained. At any moment, Mudaqiq might test them by asking that a verse be recited from memory.
Attention is turning to the future of education in Afghanistan under Taliban rule, with calls among urban educated Afghans and the international community for equal access to education for girls and women. The madrasas -- Islamic religious schools for elementary and higher learning, attended only by boys -- represent another segment of Afghan society, poorer and more conservative.
Read: Asian TT Championships: Bangladesh men beat Afghanistan, women Nepal
And they too are uncertain what the future will hold under the Taliban.