Presentation on Ethnic Children’s Education

Sadia Afrin Binte Azad

Who are the ethnic people?

• An ethnic group or ethnicity is a socially defined category of people who identify with each other based on common ancestral, social, cultural or national experience.[1]

• The world is made up of thousands of ethnic groups. Han Chinese represent about 18% of the global population. [2]

Ethnic Communities of Bangladesh

• The indigenous peoples of Bangladesh refer to native ethnic minorities including the Chittagong Hill Tracts, Sylhet Division, Rajshahi Division and Mymensingh District. [3]

• The primary census report of 2011 gives the number of ethnic population groups of Bangladesh as 27. [3]

• The Chakma and Marma are the two largest ethnic groups of Bangladesh. [3]

Key Features of Government Initiatives• In line with the (2010) education policy, Ministry of Primary and Mass

Education have decided to launch pre-primary and primary education in the languages of the ethnic minority communities as a dropout deterrent.• Under the new programme, all five-year-old children will be taught

exclusively in their ethnic languages for one year. In the second year, they will additionally learn in Bangla and English. In third and fourth years, ethnic-language study will decrease in order to bridge students to mainstream schooling.

Key Features of BRAC-EEC (Education of Ethnic Children)• BRAC established the EEC unit in 2001, to adapt its non-formal

teaching model to meet the needs of indigenous children, who do not speak Bengali - the standard medium of education in Bangladesh. [4]

• In EEC schools, teachers explain lessons orally in ethnic language, alongside Bangla, using educational materials based on local culture and heritage. This method helps indigenous children do better in class and increase their participation, while improving their enrolment and retention rates. [4]

Education Support Centre by EDCO

• Ethnic Community Development Organization (EDCO) education activities originally focused on free Educational Materials Distribution (EMD).

• EDCO identified lack of basic educative tools were a reason behind dropouts in the schools within indigenous communities. EDCO helped provide free educational materials to the poorest indigenous children, enabling them to continue their education. • ESC began with the objective of increasing attendance rates and the

number of children completing primary level education. [5]

Principles of this approach:

• Both work on MLE (multi language education)• Both provide the education in the mother tongue of the children

belonging to the ethnic groups.• Both programs are designed to keep children in school and in turn

improve enrollment

Strengths:

• All the programs appoint teachers who are from the indigenous community of that school.• Medium of instruction is indigenous child’s mother tongue.• All programs have developed books and additional material in their

own language for children of at least up to grade 3.• There has been MLE schools set up all over the country. BRAC EEC

Program it self has 2,803 ethnic minority schools in which currently about 72,394 ethnic minority students are enrolled.

Shortcomings

• At present, primary school teachers are Bengali-speakers, who cannot communicate with tribal students so Government might need to relax the conditions for the appointment of teachers from the ethnic communities to make the initiative successful.• A study conducted by MLE Forum-CAMPE finds that 102 organizations run

pre-primary and primary MLE programs within 78 indigenous and ethnic communities in 112 sub-districts in 29 districts of Bangladesh. These curricula lack uniformity and more than half of the teachers in these schools have education qualifications below SSC.• Lack of motivation and literacy of guardians meant that children were not

encouraged to attend school or able to gain help in completing their homework at home.

Sources:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_group

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_world#Ethnicity• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_peoples_in_Bangladesh• http://education.brac.net/education-for-ethnic-children-eec• http://www.ecdo-bd.org/what-we-do/education/• http://khabarsouthasia.com/en_GB/articles/apwi/articles/features/2013/05/21/f

eature-01• http://www.thedailystar.net/education-for-indigenous-children-35129

Thank You

Questions?