Govt’s top priority is to turn every school into a fully functional educational institution: Bobby

The government’s highest priority is to transform every school in the country into a fully functional educational institution, State Minister for Primary and Mass Education Bobby Hajjaj said today (26 July).

“What matters more than school infrastructure or project implementation is how much students actually learn when they attend school,” he said while addressing a daylong training workshop at the Primary Teachers’ Training Institute in Sylhet as the chief guest.

The district primary education office organised the workshop titled “Classroom Operations, Monitoring, Accountability and Changing Expectations of Local Administration in Bangladesh’s Primary Education.”

The state minister himself conducted three training sessions spanning nearly six hours.

Addressing field-level education officials, he provided guidance on the future vision for primary education, administrative reforms, effective monitoring and improving learning standards.

“Practical information must be collected from the field to determine why a school is not functioning effectively—whether because of teacher shortages, infrastructure problems, inadequate training or any other reason,” Bobby said.

He stressed the need to ensure swift solutions based on accurate information instead of concealing the true extent of the problems.

“All government investment will centre on student learning. Therefore, school inspections should not be limited to administrative supervision. Emphasis must be placed on assessing students’ learning progress by conducting direct ‘learning audits’ in classrooms,” he said.

The state minister said the government was working to improve the status, capacity and facilities of administrative officials to bring qualitative changes to primary education.

At the same time, officials’ performance, transparency and accountability would be assessed more strictly, he said.

Bobby also said the government planned to appoint cleaners and night guards at all government primary schools by next year.