Primary level enrollments 3m less during Covid

Enrollments at the primary level schools across the country were nearly 3 million less during the Covid pandemic, according to a recent study.

Senior Research Fellow of Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS) Dr SM Zulfiqar Ali, also the research lead, disclosed the information on Wednesday at the two-day BIDS Research Almanac 2023 in the capital.

Presenting their assessment of the education receiving status of the primary school students during the pandemic, he said: “Some 8.7 per cent less students, nearly 3 to 3.2 million, enrolled across the country during the pandemic. And most of the missing enrollments were reported at char or coastal areas, around 17.8 per cent.”

“There is just no trace of them. These students are believed to have dropped out during the time,” he added.

The research was conducted for the Directorate of Primary Education and World Bank, he mentioned adding that it was conducted on 62,703 grade 3 and 4 students of 1,644 government primary schools from 63 districts across the country.

He represented a poor scenario found among the students as the digital learning method adopted during the pandemic caused a devastating impact on them.

“Around 49.9 per cent of the respondents from third grade failed to read all three Bangla letters (including a complex one) and 3.4 per cent failed to read any. In case of word reading, 52.9 per cent failed to recognise all three words while 4.1 per cent could not read any.

In the case of fourth graders, 40 per cent could not read all three words while only 62.1 per cent of the respondents could not read all three words with difficult spelling,” he added.

The scenario in mathematics is even worse, he said. According to the research, schools situated nearer to the upazila headquarters are providing better education to the students.

One of his team members, Shiban Sahana said that although 86 per cent of the students were found to be aware of the government-provided TV-based learning programme, only 2 per cent took part in it.

While over 90 per cent of the teachers were found involved in the remote learning system, students and teachers preferred a blended learning method, both in-person and remote.