Campe demands 20% of budget for allocation

The Campaign for Popular Education (Campe) on Monday placed a 17-point charter of demands, including 20% budgetary allocation for the education sector, with a view to recovering the education losses caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Campe submitted a memorandum to Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal to meet their demands.

The memorandum undersigned by Campe Executive Director Rasheda K Chowdhury says, "Education is one of the vulnerable sectors in the country. We are on the brink of a generation disaster. So, we must recover from such a vulnerability."

"The government must take a comprehensive stimulus package to save the education sector from disaster," she said.

The other demands made by Campe include providing at least TK250 as stipend per month to pre-primary, primary, secondary, higher secondary and technical students; distributing 10% fund from the total allocation for the Primary and Mass Education Ministry to the district and upazila level schools following the school reopening guideline; announcing a stimulus package for the MPO and Non-MPO teachers under a specific policy; and allocating fund immediately to prepare the schools for reopening.

The government must allocate adequate funds for the management of internet-based classrooms and increase teachers' skills, Campe said, adding at least one digital device should be provided to all the students to build future ICT experts, Internet connection must be ensured at all schools and a special fund must be allocated to develop the ICT education.

Among other recommendations put forward by the organisation are – allocation of special fund to introduce mid-day meal for the marginal community students; taking up special projects and allocating fund for the char, haor and coastal areas; making a special allocation for students with disabilities to implement Computer Assisted Learning (CAL), Computer Assisted Instruction (CAI) system; making allocation to train a teacher for each school on mental health to provide primary treatment to students.

Campe further demanded that the government must increase funds for the technical education to create workforce at home and abroad; more budgetary allocation needs to buy technical machineries to run the laboratories; adequate budgetary allocation is needed to do research to face the Covid-19 challenges, and tax justice must be ensured and tax management must be rearranged.