Home ›› 25 Feb 2023 ›› Front
The government does not have any control over English medium schools due to a lack of necessary policies or laws to oversee the privately owned educational institutions across Bangladesh.
The indifference of the authorities concerned has left the scope for the schools to charge exorbitant admission and tuition fees from the students, leaving the guardians — especially those belonging to the middle-income group — struggling to continue their children’s education.
Most of the English medium schools — which follow the curriculums of the Cambridge International, Edexcel or International Baccalaureate boards — are operating without registration and there is no visible government initiative yet to regulate these institutions.
Sector insiders said more and more English medium schools are coming into operation every year and enrol a growing number of students. But in reality, most of them operate as business enterprises and do not ensure quality education.
The government has largely left the issue unattended and is allowing the schools to run with complete disregard for rules and regulations.
The government needs to ensure that all these schools operate in line with the rules and regulations, set a ceiling on tuition fees for these schools and have a monitoring system for regular supervision, they said.
In this regard, Dhaka Education Board Chairman Prof Tapan Kumar Sarkar told The Business Post, “It is true that most of the English medium schools are not registered but we are trying our level best to bring them under registration.”
“As the country currently has no law on English medium education, we do not have the organisational mechanism and capacity to monitor and control these institutions,” he added.
Prof Sarkar, however, said that a registration guideline for English medium schools was issued by the Education Ministry in 2017 and the institutions have been registering following it.
According to Bangladesh Education Statistics 2021 conducted by the Bangladesh Bureau of Educational Information and Statistics (BANBEIS), there are 137 registered English medium schools across the country.
Some 68,825 students currently study in these schools. Of them, 30 are O-level schools, 90 are A-level and 17 are junior schools, showed the data.
However, school owners say an estimated 500 English medium schools are operating across the country, offering primarily A and O-level courses.
Registration must
Insiders said the number of such schools was less than five in Dhaka in the 1970s but it is now around 500 around the country as English medium schools are becoming more popular with more people from the middle-income group choosing them for their children’s education.
Apart from English medium schools, many educational institutions also offer English medium courses along with the mainstream Bangla medium courses and their English versions.
The schools offer several types of education, curriculums and teaching methods and charge various amounts of tuition fees thanks to the absence of government monitoring.
According to education board sources, several hundred English medium schools are still unregistered while the registered ones have never taken approval for their managing committees or submitted annual audit reports to the government.
Most of these schools have no document other than trade licences taken from the city corporations as educational consultants but not as educational institutions, they said.
Board officials said the Registration of Private Schools Ordinance 1962 and the Private School Registration Rules 2017 oblige all schools, including the English medium ones, to register with the authorities concerned. According to these, operating unregistered schools is a criminal offence.
It is also mandatory for the schools to have government-approved governing bodies and submit annual audit reports to the education boards for ensuring transparency of their operations, income and expenditures. But the English medium schools are not following the rules.
The Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) is the authority that gives registration to English medium schools but it has no regulatory authority whatsoever over these institutions.
Bangladesh English Medium Schools Association General Secretary GM Nizam Uddin told The Business Post, “Since most of these schools are unregistered, the government does not have the actual number of such. But as per our study, around 500 such schools are operating nationwide.”
About the high tuition fees, he said, “The range of tuition fees is not the same at all English medium schools. There are two types of schools where fees are either low or high. So the guardians can choose a school for their children as per their financial capability.”
No rein on fees
The yearly admission fee at most of the English medium schools ranges from Tk 1.5 lakh to Tk 3 lakh on an average. But some high-end institutions charge over Tk 5 lakh as a yearly admission fee.
The monthly tuition fees range from Tk 8,000 to Tk 50,000. There are also various other associated fees they charge from the students.
At the beginning of an academic year, the students have to purchase books, school uniforms and all stationery products required in a year from specific shops designated by the school authorities.
Several guardians said many English medium schools are failing to provide quality education as most of the students have to depend on coaching centres for subjects like science, language, accounting and economics.
They also said they have to pay Tk 7,000-10,000 per month for coaching per subject. On average, a family has to pay Tk 2-4 lakh per year for their children’s education at an average English medium school.
“My son’s school is increasing fees every year. The costs for books and stationaries are also going up simultaneously. But it seems there’s no authority to oversee these issues,” said Shamim Al Mamun, whose son is a student at an English medium school in the capital’s Bashundhara area.
Bangladesh English Medium School Parents Forum President AKM Ashraf Ul Haque told The Business Post that these schools are operating as they wish because there is no regulation or monitoring of the government.
He said they are now demanding separate law and monitoring cells because the authorities at English medium schools have turned their institutions into business entities due to a lack of government supervision.
After the Covid-19 pandemic eased and educational institutions resumed in-person academic activities, English medium schools increased tuition fees between July 2022 and January this year, in the name of rising management costs, Ashraf said.
The schools are set to increase the tuition fees by up to 20 per cent again from upcoming July, he added.
No improvement despite petitions
Ashraf said an estimated 4 lakh students are currently studying at such schools around the country and the number is growing every year. “So, the government should give proper attention to these institutions.”
Many parents said that they did not see any change at the schools even after filing writ petitions with the High Court, appealing to the government for bringing English medium schools under regulations and controlling the rising trend of tuition and other fees at high rates.
On April 23, 2014, the High Court ordered English medium schools to stop taking session fees or readmission fees after hearing a writ petition filed by the parents of two students.
Then, on May 25, 2017, the High Court passed a verdict banning session or readmission fees and issued 17 guidelines to regulate the operations of English medium schools.
However, the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on January 3, 2021, stayed 16 of the 17 directives issued by the High Court.
The only directive that was exempted from the stay order was the directive to the school managing committees to celebrate the cultural heritage of the Bengali nation at the schools.
