Secondary education: Unitrack or not?

Historically, secondary education access worldwide was limited to a small privileged group and one academic stream was the norm. The aim was to prepare most high school students for higher education. With the expansion of opportunities for secondary education, larger proportions of young people enrolled in high schools. The idea of preparing students for future occupations and linking secondary education to career choices took hold. Separate tracks or streams were introduced in most countries at the secondary level. The main purpose was to separate out those who would follow an academic stream and go on to higher education and others who would enter vocational and technical training institutions. Children of age 11+ years at the end of primary schooling competed to gain entry into the academic stream that promised greater opportunities and rewards in life. This became the prevalent system in Europe and elsewhere, except in North America, where public secondary education offered largely a common curriculum for all.

Higher levels of skills and basic competencies -- especially in language, mathematics, science and lately, computer literacy -- are now demanded from workers by modern economies in the globalised markets. The pendulum has shifted to more years of general education for all students in the secondary school. The need for learning new skills and making workers adaptable and trainable for different jobs in one's lifetime also put a premium on general education and basic competencies. In both developed and developing countries, a common core curricular content with some elective subjects in secondary education has become the dominant model. From this perspective, the government decision is the right one; in fact, it should have come twenty years ago.

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We have serious problems in our secondary education system which must be considered in introducing any change in the curriculum. Secondary education is already divided into several parallel sub-systems. Besides the general secondary school to which the government decision applies, there are madrasas of various types, the English medium proprietary institutions preparing students for overseas credentials, other English medium schools following the national curriculum, and the formal vocational-technical institutions. There is no parity or commonality in educational content and quality criteria among them.

A good case can be made for at least a beginning with a common stream in general secondary schools which serve at least two thirds of secondary level students. The questions being raised by the skeptics, however, have merit. Are the schools prepared for absorbing a dose of substantial change in their teaching programme? SSC results have shown that about half of all the candidates fail and in some 3, 000 of about 20,000 secondary level institutions the pass rate has been from zero to ten percent. This is due to, among other reasons, poor quality of teachers and even absence of qualified teachers for science, mathematics and English in a large number of schools, especially in rural areas.

Complaints have been voiced about teachers and schools not being made aware in time or given guidance and orientation about the new approach. A number of other reform measures is under introduction. These include teacher accreditation and certification allowing only those in a pool of certified teachers to be employed, privatisation of textbooks leading to a choice among multiple books for the same subject, a new learning assessment method which will emphasise knowledge and skills rather than recall of textbooks, and linking government subvention to performance of schools. This is quite an ambitious agenda. At least some progress in these will prepare schools better for other reforms. Over-burdening the curriculum with teaching contents in the name of standards without regard to the reality of teacher skills and school facilities can also be a problem. This would defeat the purpose of the unitrack curriculum and must be carefully scrutinised.

Some of the dissenters about the unitrack curriculum speak from ignorance or misunderstanding. However, the concern about preparedness of teachers and schools and their capacity to absorb reforms cannot be underestimated, if the aim is genuine reform and improvement in student performance. Moreover, a change in the curricular and teaching content in grades nine and ten have consequences for the HSC level too. The implications for the earlier stage of grades six to eight also cannot be ignored. A prudent course of action would be to proceed more deliberately, allow the time necessary for preparation and orientation for all concerned, and introduce the unitrack curriculum from 2007 academic year. An alternative may be to test it in 2006 in a selected number of schools which are judged to be well-prepared, at least in respect of qualified teaching personnel to teach all the subjects. This would mean having two sets of examination questions for SSC examination in 2008 -- not something that cannot be handled.

Unfortunately, new initiatives have a tendency to become a matter of political discord in our confrontational political culture without these being judged on their merit. This is another reason for proceeding not in haste, but with due deliberation, in introducing a significant change in secondary education.

Dr. Manzoor Ahmed is the Director of Institute of Educational Development in BRAC University (BU-IED).