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Khulna, Bangladesh

Bangladesh, as a developing economy is still struggling to create an inclusive learning environment. The FYPs (sixth and seventh) and the NEP 2010 emphasised equality in formal education and, also, highlighted the alternatives of formal education.

Still, the rising exclusion in terms of gender discrimination, socio-demographic, economic and geographic context in the education sector of Khulna city inhibiting the foundation of the learning city. There are hardly any educational opportunities for the elderly and physically challenged people. Alternative routes of formal education are not prioritised. Therefore, the most interesting sub-networks of learning cities for Khulna city are:

Addressing Disadvantage to Build Inclusive Learning Cities

• Application of city-specific education policies to shape inclusive, fair, and equitable education opportunities in Khulna city irrespective of socio-demographical, economic, geographical, and situational characteristics.
• Increased public funding, effective coordination among different levels of education, and decentralisation of responsibilities among the local authorities to ensure equitable and quality learning outcomes to all including the elderly, physically enabled, and other disadvantaged groups.
• Proper spatial distribution of educational institutions with equal opportunity, and appropriate infrastructure, and environment to benefit all sections of the community irrespective of their social status, age, race, ethnicity, gender, disability, and geographical location.

Reimagining Inclusive Economic Futures

• Prioritisation of NFE and TVET focused learning opportunities as emphasised in NEP 2010 for up-skilling human resources, development of active citizenship, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment, and decent work opportunities for all.
•  Enablement of the environment for 'Entrepreneurship Ecosystem' through public-private collaborative training and skill-based education, increased financing, and support to ensure inclusive access to all in response to the changing economy.

• Introduction to the Learning City

Khulna, the third-largest city of Bangladesh, has evolved spontaneously over the last 30 years. The 45.65 square kilometer city hosts over 771 thousand population, of which 43% are migrants. Though deindustrialisation led to economic decline since the post-liberation (1971), the city population continued to grow at a rate of 3.5%. The growing population density is leading to urban sprawl and challenging the urban service facilities, including water supply, drainage facilities, and transport. Traffic congestion, employment crisis, poor coverage of urban amenities, environmental pollution, social segregation, waterlogging, and flash flood are some critical urban issues that are limiting the livability in this city. As one of the major economic centres of Bangladesh, the per capita GDP of Khulna is around £1288. Despite the decline in labor-intensive industrial base, industry and manufacturing sectors still offer 19% of the jobs, while most of the city inhabitants (76%) are dependent on the service sector. Still, the unemployment rate in this city is relatively high (9%). With one-fifth of the total households living below the poverty line, approximately 40% of the city inhabitants are poor. The recent key policy documents emphasise sustainable and inclusive development to ensure sustainable urban growth, where quality educations provision is prioritised as an essential social service. In effect, the national-level education and development policy documents that include the "National Sustainable Development Strategy", "Seventh Five Year Plan: FY2016-FY2020" and "National Education Policy 2010" set the broader context, targets, and mechanisms for delivering quality education provision in Khulna city

• Formal and Non-Formal Learning infrastructure

Education facilities of Khulna city follow the national structure of formal, non-formal, and semi-formal education. Formal education is offered in four different tiers that include early childhood education, primary education, secondary education, and tertiary education with a parallel religious education stream. While the public sector predominantly offers primary education, the private sectors are the foremost provider of secondary and tertiary education. Technical and vocational education and training programs (TVET) are another mainstream of formal education that offer professional degrees to different age groups people.

Figure 1: Total No of Education Institutions and Total No of Students in Khulna city (BBS, 2013)

Khulna city as a divisional headquarters offers formal education to billions of students (Figure 1). Non-formal education (NFE) provides an alternative route of education to different age groups. Four types of NFE include family and community-based early childhood education for pre-school children, non-formal basic education for the unenrolled and dropout children and adolescents, NFE for the youth and adults, and post-literacy and lifelong learning opportunities. NGOs are actively assisting the government in implementing NFE programs. NFE education in Khulna city is mostly offered in the religious centres and some NGO-operated primary schools in the urban slums.

Khulna city has few semi-formal cultural education institutes such as art schools, cultural academies along with specialised departments within university and college. A cultural academy has been established in the year 2019 to serve the city through facilitating learning opportunities of co-curricular activities to different age group people. Two public libraries, namely Khulna Divisional Public Library and Umesh Chandra Public library, provide access to numerous educational materials offering inclusive learning opportunities. To showcase South Bengals' eternal tradition and history, a divisional museum is located at the heart of Khulna city. The limited city-level opportunities often preclude the access of the residents of disadvantageous neighbourhoods, including the children, elderly, and physically disabled persons.

Figure 2: The divisional museum of Khulna City opening opportunity for a vibrant culture of learning (Photo credit: Rashed Shumon, from The Daily Star, 29 July 2020)

• Learning City Developments

Education is considered a fundamental human right in the constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh. Yet, the country had its very first National Education Policy (NEP) in 2000, and after that, following the progress in the education sector, the second NEP was adopted in 2010.

Although the potential prospects of the learning city and the building blocks of this concept have received an insignificant focus in education policies, strategies, and city-level plans, there are few notable policy areas that implicitly carry the notion of learning city. NEP 2000 and 2010, and the Sixth and Seventh FYP indirectly introduced the idea of creative, life-oriented, and continuous learning. NEP (2010) emphasises life-oriented learning to foster creativity among learners with different ideologies in a democratic culture. Community learning opportunities and inclusive educational facilities are further stressed in this policy which largely contributes to lifelong learning city. Informed by the National Sustainable Development Strategy 2010-2021, the Fifth Five Year Plan (FYP) (1997-2002) and Seventh Five Year Plan (FYP) (2016-2020) stresses gender and geography inclusive education, which is the first building block of learning city. In the Sixth FYP (2011-2015), under the Primary Education Development Program, the National Plan of Action sets goals for literacy and adult education as an effort to create eventually lifelong learning opportunities for all citizens.

SDG4 aims to promote lifelong learning opportunities for all, and therefore, the SDG-focused national policies are closely aligned with learning city development. For instance, the seventh FYP emphasises technical learning opportunities to ensure effective learning for workplaces, promotion of teacher’s training to enhance the quality of learning, and extended use of modern learning infrastructures and technologies, which all are contributing to learning city development. The city plan shapes the physical and spatial aspects of learning cities such as inclusive and gender-friendly education infrastructures. It promotes ICT-based education along with technical and vocational education. The city plan also guides access to the poor and adequate number of educational establishments for formal education. KCC and the Ministry of Education are responsible for the implementation of these guidelines.

Many discrete private and NGO institutes have already undertaken several semi-formal and informal initiatives towards learning city development. While government's focus is on inclusive learning, private and NGO institutes are promoting learning in families and communities and creating a culture of learning through different workshops and Non-formal Education programs. The appropriate measures of learning city indicators are yet to determine the progress and to evaluate the efficacy of NFE towards learning city.

• Some key activities in the Learning Cities field

Since 2015 the concept of learning city has just been introduced in development policies. It was highlighted as a tool of national skill development; yet, community-level learning activities remain inadequate. However, many initiatives implicitly and explicitly are contributing to building learning cities in Bangladesh.

Towards inclusive learning

To eliminate illiteracy after independence, all the government primary schools provide free education for all (https://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/en/1990/primary-education-compulsory-act-1990-act-no-27-1990-4770). Since 1993 monthly ration or one meal per day in deprived areas under the government initiated “food for education” program (https://www.ifpri.org/publication/food-education-program-bangladesh). Merit scholarship in board exam, stipends to the poor, disadvantaged, and female students (http://www.pmeat.gov.bd/) is offered by the government to ensure access to education. Free textbooks are distributed every year among the students of primary schools (http://m.thedailynewnation.com/news/241295/19-lakh-books-distributed-among-students-in-3-dists). Public sector-led initiatives are adopted by different private institutes that further accelerate inclusive learning.

Since 1997 the importance of adult education came to light. Under the ROSC project of Bangladesh government (http://www.rosc-bd.org/aboutus.php), some institute provides free non-formal primary education and pre-vocational training to 15+ aged children to offer access to employment. Many religious organisations and NGOs also offer NFE to safeguard adult literacy. The government mandates subsidised admission fees for females in TVET to eradicate gender disparity.

Learning in and for the workplaces

The continuous emphasis on NFE and TVET encourages the private sectors to invest in TVET (https://www.adb.org/publications/innovative-strategies-tech-voc-education-training-human-resource-development-south-asia), and, at present, Khulna city has six private technical and vocational learning institutes that facilitate professional courses and several technical and skill-building activities to the youth and adults. With the aim to provide sustainable and quality education to the students as well as to aid up to date knowledge for the teachers Khulna city offers training in Teachers Training College (http://ttc.khulna.gov.bd/) and Primary Teachers Training Institute (PTI). Many private institutes also arrange training activities for their employees for their skill development.

Aid for excellence

Many private and NGO schools provide different types of incentives for regular attendance, meritorious result, and co-curriculum activities at the individual level. At the tertiary level, students receive innovation awards, fellowships (https://www.youthop.com/bd/scholarships/bangladesh-prime-minister-fellowship-announcement-2020-21) based on their research activities to foster creativity. Education fair was held in 2019 where the research activities of Khulna University were exhibited (https://www.daily-sun.com/printversion/details/383059/2019/04/06/Education-Fair2019-held-at-the-Central-Playground-of-Khulna-University-).

Khulna city hosts many learning events such as Math Olympiad (https://matholympiad.org.bd/), Science Olympiad (https://so.iiuc.ac.bd/), debate competition, etc. A private organisation namely Bishwa Shahitto Kendro (http://www.bskbd.org/demo/index.php) offers classes on world literature for Higher Secondary students. It operates a nationwide reading program by providing books for the students at the secondary level in different schools. The city also hosts the program of the StartUp Cup, a flagship business model competition, that has begun in the city to create an ecosystem of entrepreneurs (https://griffinworx.org/bangladesh-startup-cup-launches-seven-citydistrict-nationwide-business-model-competition/).

Shift to a vibrant culture of learning

Book fair is also arranged annually as a part of the learning culture. Under the district cultural academy, diversified activities are arranged at different occasions to exhibit the culture of the country through co-curricular learnings of the city dwellers (http://shilpakala.khulna.gov.bd/site/view/photogallery/%E0%A6%AB%E0%A6%9F%E0%A7%8B%E0%A6%97%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%AF%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B2%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%BF). Under the Mobile Library Program (MLP) organised by private initiative, books reach the doorsteps of all sorts of readers as the libraries-on-wheels travel in both in rural and urban areas aims to upgrade the reading habits of the people (http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Bishwo_Shahitto_Kendro).

• Priority Areas for Future Development

Ensure access to education for all

• Organising more city-level education events to ensure inclusiveness and increase the participation of citizens.
• Promoting remote learning activities through modern technologies to ensure equal opportunities of education irrespective of learners’ gender, ethnicity, social class, physical ability, and geographical context.
• Facilitating neighbourhood-based education to ensure equal spatial access to all.
• Ensuring inclusive participation of all classes of people in all kinds of learning activities.

Promote education for economic wellbeing

• Advocating IT education to facilitate technical and remote learning and to support self-employment at all ages.
• Promoting interactive, favourable, and joyful learning methods in all learning hubs including workplaces to ensure participants capacity development.
• Prioritising technical and vocational learning and objective-focused NFE to promote self-employment opportunities and skilled human resources.

Learning through the celebratory process

• Motivating people to actively participate in learning events like conferences, seminars, competitions to showcase personal skills.
• Promoting science, techniques, technologies, and arts through the establishment of different science galleries, exhibition halls, and cultural academies.

Revitalise learning in communities

• Introducing community-based learning centers complementing formal education to train the primitive society.
• Actively engaging citizens in community-based learning by providing proper infrastructure.
• Developing community-based organisations to create a learning environment within the community.
• Introducing quality integral care service within the community with the involvement of families to favour the development of children from their early childhood.

Resource mobilisation

• Improving and reshape existing facilities like public spaces and buildings to create a creative learning environment.
• Prioritising technical and vocational learning and objective-focused NFE through public-private partnerships to promote self-employment opportunities and skilled human resources.
• An increasing number of skilled teachers, ensuring the adequacy of appropriate learning infrastructures and encouraging practical and technical learning to achieve quality learning.
• Utilising media to promote interactive, innovative, and lifelong learning opportunities.

Extend the use of modern learning technologies

• Ensuring the use of different analogue and digital equipment under different courses of science, arts, techniques, and technologies to foster creativity, innovation, and self-confidence among students.
• Organising training on ICT and internet usage to accelerate modern learning and to ensure access to the modern employment sector.

Improve the quality of education

• Ensuring uniform quality education by discouraging the excessive commercialisation of education so that every student gets equal opportunities for learning.
• The increasing number of skilled teachers, ensuring the adequacy of appropriate learning infrastructures and encouraging practical and technical learning to achieve quality learning.

Prepare for Strategic progress

• Involving the idea and features of learning city within the city plan.
• Developing community-based organisations to create a learning environment within the community.
• Engaging all possible stakeholders irrespective of social or economic class, gender, age, and physical condition for preparing a plan to create a learning environment.
• Ensuring a stable supply of funding to support the initiatives towards a learning environment.
• Monitoring and evaluating the progress in the culture of learning.