Coaching business and law enforcement, fair environment of educational institutions is unprotected today

Education is a fundamental right in Bangladesh. The state is responsible for providing quality education to students from primary to higher education. But over the past few decades, it has been seen that coaching centers or private tuition have become a huge business. School and college teachers often force students to take coaching or private tuition without paying full attention to the classroom. As a result, unreasonable financial pressure is created on parents. To control this trend and discipline the education system, the government has formulated the “Teachers and Educational Institutions Coaching Trade Control Policy, 2012”.

Coaching centers have sprung up everywhere from cities to villages in Bangladesh. A large part of them are run outside the rules. Without giving enough emphasis on school teaching, many teachers force students to go for specific coaching. As a result—
Education takes on a commercial form.

The financial pressure on parents increases.
The poor and marginalized students fall behind.
School teaching becomes weak.

Even at the gates of many government primary schools or secondary schools, posters of coaching centers can be seen, which directly questions the government’s policies and educational ideals.
In 2012, the government formulated the “Coaching Business Control Policy”. Its main points are—

1. No teacher will be able to coach or provide private tuition to students of his own institution.
2. It is completely prohibited to put up advertisements, posters, banners of coaching centers inside or at the gates of school, college or university campuses.
3. If a teacher violates this policy, administrative action will be taken against him; if necessary, he may be dismissed from his job.
4. If students are sent to coaching for no reason, it is a punishable offense.
5. There are monitoring committees at the district and upazila levels, which will supervise these activities.
   This law has basically protected the basic structure of the education system. This policy is aimed at making teachers focus only on teaching in the classroom. Because, if education is based only on coaching, then the purpose of the national education policy is disrupted. In addition, poor students are left behind in the competition.

Although the law has been enacted, its implementation in practice is still facing challenges. Because many teachers break the rules and get away with it by using family and social influence.