Bangladesh offers free and compulsory primary education to all the school aged children and the government adopts various steps to make it successful as nobody would be left out of school. The country has made remarkable progress in boosting enrolment and attendance in primary education alongside with reducing dropout considerably. However, still a considerable number of children have been out of school because of dropout or have never been enrolled in school due to social adversities, unfavourable living conditions because of geographical impediments and last but not the least financial constraints. In addition, the government has deep concern for the recent rise of dropped out children because of confronting huge learning losses or engaging income-generating activities for livelihood embraced during the pandemic. Despite the progress that has been made in education especially in the primary education sector over the years, still there is room for much improvement in the field of creating access to receive basic education for these unfortunate out of school children.
Children that are out of school tend to be
mostly from economically disadvantaged households and vulnerable populations of
urban slums and hard to reach/remote areas like low-lying haors, tea gardens,
Chars, tribe inhabited areas, hilly areas etc. Above mentioned areas’
vulnerable families also have financial problems that certainly discourage them
from receiving the basic education of their children. So, they need to provide
not only the opportunities of acquiring foundational literacy and numeracy but
also to provide skill-developing training to make them employable and competent
or to the labour market.
Work-based learning can provide a strong
learning environment and develop job oriented skills to out of school children.
Employers must get benefit by recruiting these learners through utilizing
productive skills of them. The country also benefited from an increase in
skilled labour and ensuring out of school children’s smoother transition from
school to stable employment without heavy government investment.
Work-based learning is a promising way of
engaging never enrolled or dropped out youths to work by making them employable
through providing skills development training as well as foundational literacy
and numeracy knowledge. Work-based learning provides young people with an
alternative way to learn that is a blend of job-oriented and academic. It can
provide a bridge into careers, equip them with skills that are in demand in the
labour market and connect them to potential employers.
Employers or industry owners’ engagement is
essential to make work-based learning initiatives for out of school children/youths
a success. Therefore, finding ways to make work-based learning more attractive
to employers is a key challenge for policy makers. The government needs to
motivate employers by clarifying the philosophy of this philanthropic
initiative that it not only provides an opportunity for employers to show
social responsibility, but also be well aligned with their business objectives.
There may be an MOU with the government and employers for providing logistic
and monetary support to run the work-based learning centres as a collaborative
initiative. Learners also have a contract with the concerned employers to work
for the employers for a stipulated time with the rationale wages.
Work-based learning may promote and develop
both academic and skill development learning of out of school children and
empowering them to become successful in the job market. Their developed
job-oriented skills and achieved academic knowledge may be demanded by the
international labour market too. Therefore, developing a significant number of
out of school children into skilled workforces by nourishing them through
launching work-based learning centres should get the most priority to the
government and the following step might be considered by the government.
The government may sign an MOU to the
employers to run countrywide work-based learning centres providing logistic,
technical and monetary support. Curriculum development and management related
activities might be administered by the concerned ministry and directorate.
BOESL may be given responsibility of
running some centres in each district so that skilled manpower might be
developed for international labour market recruitment.
Skill development training courses might be
selected considering the learning centre area’s labour market demand as well as
local natural resources that have alignment to used raw materials by the
employers. Target students’ family profession may also be considered.
Flexible timetable may become effective for
smooth running of the centres. In addition, the students might be provided
nutritious food and a monthly stipend.
Considering massive demand for skilled
labour forces in the competitive domestic and international labour market as well
as fulfilling SDG targets, the government may introduce the work-based learning
approach for mainstreaming up to the secondary tier.
Md Bayazid Khan
The writer works for primary
education in Bangladesh.
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