We should avoid staging the theatre of education The covid situation and the theatre of introducing so-called ‘competency-based’ curriculum pushed the teaching and learning situation in the lowest rung. The teaching learning scenario, receiving and giving education, in the true sense of the term, evaporated many years back from our classes, educational institutions, society with some exceptions occurring in some institutions like missionary and privately run schools and colleges along with cadet colleges of the country. The tradition of going to the class, conducting exams and publishing results happen without any tangible effects as nothing of these goes professionally and fruitfully. There lies no account of what is really going on in the classes, students are learning or they are really participating in the teaching learning situation. Classes go on but what happens here there lies no real account of it. Result is the gap between real learning and these traditional activities is widening day by day. The country now sees holding the largest public examination known as SSC. Every day, a huge number of examines remain absent, get expelled and copy on mass without facing any hurdles. The dailies of Bangladesh bring us to the second day of SSC exam when we see 28 thousand 943 students remained absent, 83 expelled and 18 teachers were also expelled. This number is increasing while exams go forward. Till that day, the percentage of remaining absent in this public examination stands at 1.65. On 15 April English first paper exam was held under nine general education boards where 13 lac 57 thousand 593 examines were registered but that day 15 thousand 628 students were absent. In Dakhil exam 1thousand 490 and in technical education board 2 thousand 825 students remained absent while 36 students were expelled the same day because of adopting unfair means. The very first day of beginning SSC exam, Bengali first paper was the subject when students were seen writing answers opening books. Interestingly, teachers were not seen to take any action. The same thing happened in English exam also that got spread by virtue of social media. Why does it happen? Many practical reasons can be held responsible for that. In the micro level, students don’t come to the class regularly, even though some of them are in the class- they remain there just physically not mentally and attentively. There actually lies no incentive, no encouragement and no positive threat from any side that will convince the students to be attentive in the class, try to learn the subjects through repeated practice, asking questions to teachers and doing several exercises on the topic. All this left from the education scene with the advent of Covid and finally during the trumpeting of so-called ‘new curriculum’ which pushed students into a culture of not reading, not learning, not sitting for assessment. Students are now busy with demonstration against teachers, head teachers, chanting slogans against exams and for short syllabus and without facing any exam instead. They were not seen with any demonstrating in the previous years when the nation killing ‘curriculum was introduced. They take to the streets time and again sometimes for very negligible or some flimsy grounds and sometimes for nothing. They cause untold sufferings to the passers-by and people of all walks of life for any issue which is not related to them at all. The country witnessed the unrealistic and unreasonable demonstration of the students belonging to National University. They demanded to upgrade several colleges into universities. Why? We want to say just to fatten the procession of educated unemployed. Currently, the entire national watches the unruly demonstration of the polytechnic institutions for realizing six demands. We practically see that the students coming out of these institutions don’t acquire any skills of the 21st century which are absolutely necessary for getting jobs. They don’t gain any skill either in their respective disciplines. Now they are found in the streets announcing one program after another remaining away from the class, laboraroty, library or in any workshop or industry where they should go learn skills practically. The education sector definitely harbours many loopholes. To address those, ways must be quite different. To conduct the public examinations a series of directions as usual go to the field to be followed but who bothers? Despite this rotten situation, when examination scripts are distributed among the teachers for evaluation, the board authorities further direct the examiners to go through the scripts very sympathetically without being harsh or tight to check them. This was my experience when I used to be the examiner of boards or question setter. The situation now in this area is far worse. Now examiners are threatened so that no student should fail in any subject and this threat is producing hybrid results every year causing irreparable loss to the students and entire education system. Still things continue happening. We need to decide whether we should allow it to happen further. This educational mismatch produces our officials, teachers and administrators. Necessarily things cannot appear quite refined from it rather with a tinge of it. We know copying goes on in the BCS exam even. Not only that, question leakage in the previous BCS exams was a common affair and some of the perpetrators have been arrested but that rotten culture could not remove the officials it gave birth to. And so, the society must see the consequences. We all want good teachers to teach our children so that they can be engineers, doctors, police officer or administrators. Nobody wants their children to become teachers. So, how can we expect good teachers in the society? You see, for receiving real treatment we go abroad as we don’t have any trust on our doctors and there lies not reason to trust them actually. When we need to do any complex work or sophisticated construction, we need to invite engineers from outside the country. Our students do have merit, they do have creativity but our entire system of teaching learning, nurturing and developing them and assessing their performance prove faulty. That’s why we produce doctors without real medical knowledge and almost the similar situation goes with other areas. In the public examination, questions are very traditional. Students and teachers know which questions will come from which chapters. What kind of questions will be there. The style of questions is also known to them. Despite these facts, students copy in the examination. Its adverse effect will appear in every aspect of their life lives when they occupy any position in the society. Even, the madrasa students who are supposed to be guided by moral and religious education. When they are also copying and their teachers are helping them, words fail to explain the moral degradation of the society! So, we should come forward to avoid staging the drama of education and embrace how real education can be instilled in the minds of our pupils. Masum Billah Lead Education and Research: Dainikshiksha and Amder Barta.President- ETAB ( English Teachers’ Association of Bangladesh) Cell:01714-091431 Email: masumbillah65@gmail.com

PSC’s Clarification on BCS Examination Deserves Appreciation PSC has clarified its stance on the backlogs and the measures it has taken to remove the problems heaved over the last several years in holding BCS examinations retains merits. It has postponed the preliminary examination of the 47th BCS shifting its original date from June 27 to 8 August 2025. Responding to the repeated demands of the job seekers, PSC has decided to defer the examination. Despite the rescheduling of 47th BCS preliminary exam, the written examination of the 46th BCS will proceed as planned and begin on May 8, as per the previous announcement. The circular for the 47th BCS was published in 2024 planning to recruit 3,487 cadre and 201 non-cadre officials where around 400,000 candidates initially vied for those positions. The BCS examinations experience a backlog of four exams with some processes dragging on for over three years. The 44th, 45th, and 46th BCS exams were initiated under the former Awami League government whose final results and recruitment have not yet been done. The 47th BCS circular, the latest, was issued in November last year. We know that the interim government has formed a `Public Administration Reform Commission’ which has submitted a report to the government recommending that the entire BCS process — from examination to recruitment — be completed within 18 months. According to the proposal, exams should be concluded within the first 12 months, followed by six months for publishing final results and completing recruitment. The newly employed PSC officials aim to complete each BCS cycle within a year to clear the backlog that we cannot but appreciate. PSC has been trying it level best to untie the knot developed in conducting 44th,45th and 46 the BCS examinations. According to its latest decision, the examination on compulsory subjects of 46th BCS exam will be held between 8-19 May while position related subjects will start from the last week of June with the completion date by 7 July 2025.The Viva-Voce exam for the candidates who qualified in the written test in 46th BCS exam during the Viva-Voce of 44th BCS exam to be held from 22 April to 19 May. And this viva-voce will be held after 16 June and will be tried to complete within the shortest possible time. And the final results of the 44th BCS examination is expected to be published by June 2025. Also, the results of the written exam of 45 BCS will be published by June 2025.The PSC has to depend on other organizations for printing questions, selecting examination centres and for some other purposes/areas. The candidates and concerned are requested to go through the messages of PSC website to get the genuine message. Generally, three to four lakh applicants participate in a preliminary examination. Out of these, 10 to 12 thousand pass the written examination, and after the viva (oral) examination, a final list is made for recruitment against the vacant posts. For this, the commission has also decided to set an annual calendar for the preliminary, written, oral and psychological tests to be held during the year. That must be a smart decision. When the Public Service Commission (PSC) has issued the notification for the 47th BCS exam, a section of the applicants from previous three other batches started movement demanding the postponement of the exam. Thus, the upcoming 47th BCS exam was now in uncertainty and in response to this uncertainly, PSC has clarified its points. The PSC published the 46th BCS circular seeking applications for 3,140 posts. Of the posts, the highest number will be recruited in the health care. About 338,000 candidates have applied for the positions. The activities of the 44th BCS have not been completed even after four years, while the written examination of the 45th BCS was completed 15 months ago; but the results have not been published. Thus the activities of the four BCS exams from the 44th to the 47th are in a mess. Controversy has also arisen over the results of the 46th BCS preliminary. PSC has resolved to expedite the publication of the preliminary exam results and schedule the written test promptly to mitigate the setback incurred by its postponement. The commission has decided to hold the preliminary examination on April 26. Additionally, the," he said. The 46th BCS preliminary exam was earlier scheduled to be held on March 9 this year. The PSC also issued a notification in this regard. However, the date of the examination was changed due to the city corporation elections. Candidates’ protesting in front of the PSC demanding the postponement of the examination does not show a good sign as a handful of candidates’ demand does not necessarily reflect most candidates’ desire and demand. Postponing any one exam will have an impact on every subsequent exam. Where there are many vacancies in government jobs, postponing the exam will mean increasing the uncertainty of job seekers. Therefore, we expected that PSC would be adamant about the exam schedule. However, considering some practical reasons such as clearing the previous exams, selecting the deserving candidates through a series of screening process must be completed before floating advertisement of new BCS examination. It tends to relieve the candidates’ tension, save time and ease the hassle. We cannot afford to forget that BCS is a competitive exam. It does not mean that a course to be completed and then an examination should be held to assess the course. It does not also mean that some teachers of an institution are morally obliged to complete a course and they cannot conduct the exam without completing it. When the case and purpose of BCS examination proves different, we should not bow down us before any hasty or differently motivated demand of the candidates just like the students of SSC and HSC exams who want to change their dates of exam, want auto promotion and have any examination based on short syllabus. From time and again, media unfolds the reports of incompetencies of our public servants in various sectors that actually originates from the faulty recruitment system along with the touch of corruption in the form of question leakage and so-called quota system. We do believe that the current PSC setup would take pragmatic and honest steps to save PSC from these allegations. . Masum Billah Lead- Education and Research: Dainikshiksha.com and Amader Barta And President- ETAB