Qawmi madrasa degree elevated

The government has taken a decision of enormous significance whose impact on the future of education in Bangladesh will be very far reaching. We shall reserve our judgment on the prudence of such a decision for the time being, but for now ask the government to inform us what mechanism, the modality or, indeed, the process that it had adopted, if any, in reaching the conclusion to bring the Dawra degree at par with Master's when in the case of general education, none other than the universities and some prestigious colleges are entitled to award this degree.

This is also a very exceptional decision, because, of the two types of madrasas in Bangladesh, the Qawmi has been left entirely on its own and does not allow any oversight of the government of its finance and conduct. We would like to recall here the education minister's comments not very long ago that the government had formed two commissions, separately for general and madrasa education, to bring in reforms in education. We are not aware that the said commissions have submitted their reports. Under these conditions it is only but natural to question the wisdom of drawing an equivalence between the madrasa degree and the Master's, particularly when the Qawmi madrasa is an institution whose curricula, teaching methods, duration of the course stand in need of reform. When even the government's decision to implement the one-track system of education, for justifiable reasons, has been shelved for the time being, a decision we agree with, we can hardly rationalise the government's undue haste in this regard.

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There are hardly two months left to the present government's tenure, and the committee proposed by the prime minister, which will have only a month's time to frame the implementation guidelines of this decision, is yet to be formed. Thus will it be wrong to assume that the motivation that led to this decision is driven entirely by electoral consideration?