In need of a correction course in education management

As it has happened all these years, secondary schools located in rural areas, this year too, failed even to come near their urban counterparts, according to the results of the Secondary School Certification examinations that were published on Saturday. Only five rural schools have earned places in the list of top 80 secondary schools, prepared taking 10 of the best schools from each of the eight general education boards. This has happened, as it did in the past, despite the fact that, as New Age reported on Sunday, 77 per cent of the country’s secondary schools are located in rural areas. While this keeps happening every year, governments, especially the current Awami League government, for the duration of its two consecutive tenures in office, spanning seven years or so, have always boasted of having narrowed, or even removed,  the disparity in education that exists between rural and urban areas.
This all points to the government’s flawed education management. While more than two-thirds of the secondary schools are in rural areas, the emphasis appears to have been on the schools in urban areas, in terms of the teacher-student ratio, the quality of teachers, classroom teaching and, in cases of science education, laboratory facilities. Poor or lack of oversight on schools in rural areas could be another point for the government to think about. Educationalists and educationists, interviewed in the New Age report, however, attributed this success of urban schools to the guardians as they, because of living in urban areas and being better poised financially, could spend more on the schooling of their children. This again points to another  aspect that the quality of schooling has generally declined and the students whose guardians could shelve out more money on their schooling fare better in their education. If it is true, it is then time for the government to rethink its national education management so that issues could be sorted out before they decline further.
The education minister, at the briefing where he announced the SCC and equivalent examinations results, further, said that he was planning not to prepare any list of such best secondary educational institutions from the next year. This could also be construed as a step to stop people coming to know which schools are doing better, across the rural-urban divide or within urban or rural areas. Under the circumstances, it is time that the government did some soul-searching and found out why rural schools, despite being greater in number, fail to do better in public examinations and effectively tried to narrow, or even remove, the disparity in education between rural and urban areas.

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51 held in Thailand for 'trafficking Bangladesh, Myanmar migrants'

Arrest warrants have been issued for four more suspects allegedly involved in trafficking of migrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar, police said yesterday.

Region 9 Police deputy commander Pol Maj-General Putthichat Ekachan said the four new arrest warrants brought the total to 81. Some 51 suspects have been arrested, while 30 were still at large.

He said police were hunting the remaining suspects in Songkhla, Satun and Ranong.

Putthichat said police yesterday brought 12 Rohingya migrants to identify sites believed to be camps where they were detained and asked to identify which suspects manned the camps where they were held.

The police also took pictures of various camps to show to some suspects who confessed to human trafficking charges, to identify which camp they worked at.

Songkhla Provincial Police deputy chief Pol Col Treewit Sripapa said 12 Rohingya migrants were brought to Glass Mountain in Songkhla's Sadao district.

He said the migrants remembered the route and led police to their camps. They told police details about each camp.

Meanwhile, a Thai national who allegedly owned a boat recently found by the Myanmar navy crammed with more than 200 migrants has been arrested, Myanmar's state media said yesterday.

The 53-year-old man was detained in the country's biggest city, Yangon, the Global New Light of Myanmar reported, adding that his capture was made after authorities exchanged "information with Thai police".

The paper said the man operated under a handful of Myanmar aliases, but his Thai name was Naingnut Patunsantun and he came from Ranong province in Thailand.

"He was said to have contacted human trafficking gangs in Bangladesh and trafficked people into Thailand and Malaysia," the report said.

The report did not say when the arrest was made or what the man was charged with.

Last week Myanmar's navy discovered more than 200 bare-chested men in the hull of a wooden, Thai-registered fishing vessel.

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It was the first rescue the navy made since Myanmar came under increasing pressure to stem the exodus of persecuted Rohingya Muslims from its shores after a Thai crackdown on the lucrative regional smuggling trade left thousands of desperate migrants stranded on land and sea after gangs abandoned them.

Thousands of Rohingya from Myanmar as well as Bangladeshi economic migrants have been attempting perilous boat journeys organised by people-smugglers to Southeast Asia.

Malaysia is a favourite destination. Migrants often travelled to Thailand by boat, then overland to northern Malaysia.

On Friday, a second vessel with more than 700 migrants was found by Myanmar's navy in the Irrawaddy delta region.

-The Nation/Asia News Network

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