Education in Bangladesh should get govt priority: ISD director

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Students in Bangladesh are eager to learn and to develop as intended persons by themselves like any students around the world if they are given a good curriculum and trained teachers, observed International School Dhaka director Thomas van der Wielen.
The government should support education as a priority in Bangladesh in their policies, budgets and future plans, he said.
More classes and less closure of schools, he emphasised, is the way to make up for the learning losses caused during the Covid pandemic.
Wielen, an educator for primary, secondary and tertiary levels, who worked in the Netherlands, Egypt, Kenya and Bangladesh, has recently shared his experiences, insights and opinions about the education system in Bangladesh in an interview with New Age.
About his teaching experiences in Bangladesh, Wielen said that teaching in International School Dhaka, Bangladesh, meant teaching according to an international curriculum.
According to him, the focus of teaching under an international curriculum is on collaborating, working together and making sure that the students eventually come to know a great deal in the process of learning.
In the Netherlands, Egypt, Kenya, Bangladesh everywhere, he said that he recognised, if the students are given a good curriculum and a good learning approach any student from around the world is eager to learn, eager to be ‘on board’ and thus become the intended persons by themselves, he said.
‘But the most important thing for our students to learn nowadays I think is making sure they know who they are, know what they can contribute to a company, to a group of people they work together, know their own strengths, feel empowered to use these strengths when they are working and feeling passionate about what they do, passionate about who they are and what they want to achieve,’ Wielen explained.
Replying to a question, he said that what he had recognised in the countries he worked and in Bangladesh that training of the teachers in imparting education was the key.
‘The growth as a nation, however, in any country comes from the amount of time, energy and financial support the teachers get in being trained and in being teachers for the present — not teachers that they had themselves in their schools, let’s say, in the 1990s or 1980s,’ he said.
‘As an educator, I would say the government should have a focus on education because that’s the future,’ he further said, adding that the government should support education as a priority in their policies, budgets and future plans.
As the economy of Bangladesh is doing well globally, the benefits — from the economic perspective — should really reach the students and the schools, he observed.
Wielen said that one of the priorities should be education while making budget allocations.
According to his view about the standard of education in Bangladesh, the education system in this country is very low on the international scale of education systems.
‘That is something because the priority has not been for education for a long time [in Bangladesh],’ he pointed out.