Education for out-of-school children

Fifty thousand learning centres or non-formal schools will be set up over a period of five years to impart literacy, hopefully of the functional type, to the targeted children. A huge and ambitious project that. It will require massive doses of management and administrative skills. Unless proper steps are taken prior to the commencement of the project and during the course of its implementation, risks of pitfalls, even a serious dislocation, cannot be ruled out. First of all, drawing students to the learning centres may be more difficult than apprehended. Especially, convincing those parents, who would much rather have their children engaged in financially gainful work than put them in schools, may not be easy. Secondly, the task of ensuring uniform teaching quality across the board will have to be addressed with a lot of planning and spade-work.

These are the pre-requisites without which the sustainability of the project cannot be guaranteed. The whole project needs to be kept free of corruption and irregularities that are raring to creep into it. And here, in terms of an antidote, the involvement of the local community and the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will prove to be crucial.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

At the same time, we would like to draw the attention of authorities to the much-neglected adult literacy agenda. This significant part of the non-formal education stream needs to be rejuvenated.