Why we need quality education

Education is the most important tool for the betterment of humanity as well as to develop modernization in civilization. In every government education is considered to be the most essential pillar that holds whole nation together and leads the state towards ultimate success. Education is at the heart of both personal and community development; its mission is to enable each of us, without exception, to develop all our talents to the full and to realize our creative potentiality, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of our personal aims.

Quality education enables students to develop all of their attributes and skills to achieve their potentiality as human beings and members of society. Quality education therefore implies looking into what desirable changes the educational institution wants to make in each student. Setting a high standard and help the student work toward them.

[Some special features of quality education: (1) Quality education is a human right and a public good, governments and other public authorities should ensure that a quality education service is available freely to all citizens from early childhood into adulthood. (2) Quality education provides the foundation for equity in society. (3) Quality education not only enlightens but also empowers citizens and enables them to contribute to the maximum extent possible to the social and economic development of their communities. (4) A quality education is one that focuses on the whole—the social, emotional, mental, physical and cognitive development of each student regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or geographic location. It prepares the child for life, not just for only learning outcomes. (5) Quality education provides resources and directs policy to ensure that each child enters school healthy and learns about and practices a healthy lifestyle; learns in an environment that is physically and emotionally safe for students and adults. (6) Quality education provides the outcomes needed for individuals, communities, and societies to prosper. It allows schools to align and integrate fully with their communities and access a range of services across sectors designed to support the educational development of their students. (7) Quality education is supported by three key pillars: ensuring access to quality teachers; providing use of quality learning tools and professional development; and the establishment of safe and supportive quality learning environments.

People learn basic norms, rules, regulations, and values of society through education. Moreover, high quality education enables us to lead a successful life, enhances our intelligence, skills, knowledge, and brings positive changes in our life. We need good doctor’s good engineer’s good lawyers and good teachers after all good citizens one only ensuring  availability of quality education. Education expands our vision and creates awareness. It helps us develop a disciplined life and provides us with better earning opportunities. It enables us to know the world beyond our own surroundings. Education is also a prerequisite of the prosperity and modernization of any country. Modern education is based on the humanism, freedom, equality, democracy, and human rights. The content of education keeps pace with the needs of modern society and is a mirror of its goals, values, and priorities. The present industrial society has opened up a plenty of occupations which require people with specialized skills and IT based knowledge. Quality education identifies learners’ cognitive development as the major explicit objective of all education systems and emphasizes education’s role in promoting values and attitudes of responsible citizenship and in nurturing creative and emotional development. Education administrators have a responsibility to promote policies that integrate schools, communities, and nations into a system that supports development of the whole child, ensuring that each student is healthy, safe, engaged, supported, and challenged.

The challenge of improving quality of teaching by training teachers and supporting them with modern teaching aids, tools and methodologies — like smart classrooms and digital course content–needs to be taken up so that teachers take pride in their classroom performances smoothly. The future of the country depends on a quality education being provided in every school and it plays a major role in the student education. Quality is at the heart of education, Alternatively Performance in licensure examinations is not the only measure of quality education. The quantity and quality of school inputs the effectiveness of the curriculum and teaching methods and the quality of the school and home environment.

On the basis of world`s context, reality is, about 124 million children across the world are out of school and 250 million children are not learning basic skills as a result of poor quality education. Girls, children with disabilities, those from minority groups and children living in poor and remote areas are most often denied access to quality education. Despite some sorts of the above mentioned difficulties, our government has already been established educational institutions in every underserved areas of the country, providing stipend facility, training for the teachers, infrastructural development, ICT facilities, distributing free textbooks to the students and  promotes free, equal access to quality education for all students from early learning to higher education and works with students, their families, communities, wider society patronizing to both local and international organizations so that all students are able to get a quality education as a whole. There is no substitute for quality education for the overall economic, social and moral prosperity of a country. Only quality education can build students into skilled manpower in line with the international labor market. So there is no compromise in providing quality education – the government has to work on this policy.

The writer is Research Officer, District Education Office, Secondary and Higher Education, Munshiganj