CHALLENGES TO OPTIMUM ENROLMENT IN TO PRE-PRIMARY EDUCATION IN A RURAL AREA OF BANGLADESH

Education

At present, pre-primary education is a very important issue globally, because it has an impact on lifelong learning. The physical, linguistic, social and emotional expressions of the children are developed through proper completion of pre-primary education. For this reason, the Government of Bangladesh is strongly committed, both nationally and internationally, to ensure pre-primary education for all the eligible children. The Government has set an operational framework for pre-primary education in 2008 (Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, 2008). The long-term vision includes ensuring access to preschool for all the children aged from three to below six. However, at the moment, the Government is trying to provide the pre-primary education to all the children aged from five to below six. Through this framework, the Government has already taken several initiatives. However, despite of these efforts, according to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (2015), the enrolment rate is 53% in Bangladesh. Therefore, the researcher performed this study to explore the reasons for the low enrolment rate. The parents, school management committees, parents-teachers associations and some officials were the participants of this research. Semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, observations and document/record analysis were used to investigate the reasons. Different categories of primary schools, for instance, government primary school and newly nationalised government primary school were selected from different demographic areas for focus group discussions, observations and document/record analysis. The results indicated that there were several reasons behind this situation, for instance, the lack of social awareness about the pre-primary provision; infrastructural problem and the lack of human resources. However, it must be acknowledged that this is a case study within a small demographic area, hence, it is recommended that further research should be undertaken to achieve more generalized outcomes.

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