Govt orders closure of coaching centres during SSC exam [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Govt orders closure of coaching centres during SSC exam

Local January 09, 2018

The education ministry on Monday ordered closure of all coaching centres from three days prior to beginning of Secondary School Certificate and its equivalent examinations till end of the test in a bid to check question leak.
The education ministry in a statement issued on the day said that the ministry took the decision at a meeting on upcoming SSC exam.
A top ministry official said they took the decision to prevent question leak of the exam.
Presided over by the education minister Nurul Islam Nahid, the meeting decided that all coaching centres would remain closed from three days prior to beginning of exam till end of the SSC and equivalent exams, said the statement.
Next SSC and equivalent exam would be held between February 1 to March 4 and over a million students are expected to take the exam.
The meeting also instructedcandidates of SSC and its equivalent exams to enter their respective exam halls half an hour before the tests begin, otherwise they would not be allowed to sit for the test.
Government took the decisions after education minister in December himself blamed a section of dishonest teachers for question papers leak.
‘Discussions are there for printing question papers in the exam halls 30 minutes before the tests, but what benefit can be made from it if teachers leak the questions,’ he said.
‘Coaching centres allures teachers. They engage in question leaks so that their students can perform better and they can get more students and more money,’ he explained.
Anti-Corruption Commission in December had sent a set of recommendation to education ministry asking it to close down the coaching centres as they are one of the potential sources of question leakage in public exams.
However, as the government in the outgoing year failed to check question leak in public exams, the crisis rather spread to the school-based terminal exams of elementary education, causing further slide in the already declining standards of educationand creating doubts in public mind about the credibility of the exams and education.
One after another, allegation of question leaks of different papers of Primary Education Completion Examination after Class V in November, Junior School Certificate Examination after Class VIII in the same month, Higher Secondary Certificate after Class XII in April-May and SSC Examination after Class X in February-March, surfaced ahead of the exams.
A study by Transparency International Bangladesh in August 2015 found that 63 question papers of public examinations were leaked in four years. The study also said that although question paper leak had happened since the 1970s, ‘in the past five years it became a regular phenomenon’.
The study also blamed coaching centres along with other factors for question leak in the public exams.
Educationists in the country have been calling for a ban on coaching centres and private tuition by teachers and increasing the standard of classroom teaching for a long time.
The government ban on private tuition by teachers has been largely ignored as it is still thriving five years after the ban was imposed.
The education ministry issued a circular in June 2012 to all schools, colleges and madrassahs with a guideline asking them to ‘stop teachers’ from coaching business in educational institutions.
The guideline said that teachers would not be allowed to provide coaching and private tuition to students of their own institutions. Teachers are allowed to provide private tuition to not more than 10 students of other institutions, the guideline said.
Guardians and academics alleged that many teachers were giving more time to private tuition than classroom teaching which also creates discrimination in education as, unlike well-to-do families, poorer section cannot afford coaching classes for their children.