Students elect their first-ever cabinets

Students of over 1,040 secondary schools and madrassahs cast their votes amid festival mood to elect their first-ever cabinets on Saturday.
Education minister Nurul Islam Nahid while visiting Adarsha Uchcha Bidyalya at Mirpur in the capital said such elections and cabinet at schools was introduced to facilitate development of democratic norms among over one crore students.
The minister said elections would aim to develop tolerance towards opposition views, leadership qualities and improvement of school environment.
About 6.24 lakh students from class VI to X of 1,043 schools, madrassahs and technical institutions  exercised their voting rights from 8:00am to 1:00pm simultaneously.
About 15,840 students vied for 8,344 seats of the cabinets in the election. ‘We do not have news of any untoward incidents,’ said  Md Fasiullah, director of BANBEIS and focal point of students’ elections.
The election will help improvement in teaching and learning process and cut down the dropout rate, he said.
According to the government plan, all secondary schools, madrassahs and technical institutions would have eight-member elected student cabinets by 2017, said Fasiullah.
Under the education ministry, there are 19,684 secondary schools with nearly 91 lakh students, 6,582 secondary Aliya madrassahs with nearly 22 lakh students and around 1,400 technical and vocational institutions with 1.30 lakh students.
The tenure of the first elected students’ cabinet will be six months. From the next year the tenure of cabinets will be one year, and students from classes VI to X will exercise their voting rights in January.
After the election, one of the members of the cabinet will be elected head of the cabinet on voice vote. He or she will distribute portfolios of cabinet colleagues following the norms of parliamentary democracy.
The cabinets will have ministers for preservation of educational environment on campuses, for toilet and waste management, teaching materials, health, cultural affairs and sports, midday meal, water resource, tree plantation and gardening, for observing and celebrating special days and for ICT.
In 2010, primary schoolchildren chose their leaders – members of student councils – at some 100 government primary schools. The elections were held in almost all the government primary schools across the country in 2013, 2014 and in the current year.

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