The new competency-based curriculum: A bold step, but is it practical?

Our education system regularly delivers a huge number of highly literate people (including PhDs, Masters, Doctors, Engineers, etc.), but are they truly skilled and educated? 

Our national market is fully inundated with foreign workforce and expertise; while our society is suffering from rampant corruption, abuse, exploitation, and discrimination, including the lack of transparency, accountability, and good governance. 

Bangladesh has already set up a vision for 2041, 'Smart Bangladesh', with Smart Citizen as one of its four objectives. To attain and sustain this status, it does take truly skilled and educated people. We need to rethink our education system by observing things with multifocal lenses rather than unifocal political lenses to produce Smart Citizens. 

Curriculums have a close relationship with teaching methodology. Educational contents are generally determined in accordance with a set educational objective. 'Educational objectives' are concepts of raising children to meet current and future national and global demands. 

The educational objectives substantially depend on national and global aspects, which include national economic, social, environmental, cultural, civic, and political contexts and goals, embedded with national and global demands and priorities of market skills, human rights and humanity, sustainable development goals, global citizenship education, as well as peace, security, and safety, etc. 

Apart from the national and international development traits and trends, primary and secondary education's objectives must be set out adhering to the age-appropriate Early Learning Development Standards (ELDS), as well as covering the all-learning domains, e.g., physical, motor, cognitive, social, emotional, and linguistic development. 

It's a complex, interconnected, and interplayed area of several themes and expertise, and that requires well-coordination between child psychology, sociology, teaching-learning approaches and pedagogies, and so on.

It's essential to get on board several experts, particularly social scientists, child psychologists, educators, and environmental scientists, to work together in curriculum development, even though it is difficult. If the established coordination mechanism compromises and fails to bring any group of experts on board, then it will severely compromise the quality of the whole curriculum development. 

Curriculum is not an independent and solo matter to implement; it's strongly interconnected with several other things, among them human resources and expertise, a safe, secure, and adequate school environment, full community participation, school governance, transparency, and accountability, educational research and finance, etc. 

Without preparing the appropriate conditions for teaching and learning at all levels (teachers, school infrastructure, community, adequate finance, etc.), implementing any new curriculum (replication of Finland, Japan, or Singapore's curriculum) might not bring positive results. 

A radical change in policy and plan overnight, imitating other countries' curriculum, will not add any positive value to education systems at large, as every development initiative, including educational development, has its own course that runs in collaboration with its associated environment. 

Rather, it's better to take steps for incremental changes and development in educational policy, and plan in accordance with our own civilization, history, culture, resources, potential, and opportunities, as well as considering all sorts of perspectives and perspectives, including available resources. 

The national education policy is one of the most important guides to running the education system effectively in the right direction. It's the first step for all sorts of educational planning and programming, including Curriculum development. It needs to be crystal clear, specific and actionable as a live-document, to keep it relevant for all times with social, economic, cultural, political, civic, environmental needs, priorities and changes.    

Our national education policy 2010 (updated in 2018) contains overall and level specific aims, objectives and strategies. In addition, it also highlights aims and objectives and strategies for non-formal education, madrasa education, vocational education, specialised education - for example, engineering, medicine, etc.  The new competency-based curriculum 2023 contains only 10 competencies for Pre Primary, secondary and higher secondary education (PP-XII). 

The NEP 2010 has cited 'Aim and Objective' together without making any distinction, but they are two different terms used to manifest two distinct aspects, relating to the impact and effect level-results. So, this is an ambiguous and incomprehensible policy.  

Inconsistency and overlapping exists between the overall aims, objectives and strategies. For example, the total number of the consolidated aims, objectives and strategies for the whole education system is 30, whereas they are 38 for pre-primary and primary education, which does not make any clear sense. 

Furthermore, the pre-primary and primary level specific aims, objectives and strategies do not cover all learning and development domains that are universally recognised as learning and development domains across the world. So, it's necessary to review and redefine our national education policy's aims, objectives and strategies clearly, so that it can provide the practitioners strategic directions rightly.     

To begin with, as a citizen of Bangladesh, I would like to share my profound gratitude to the government and people involved in this curriculum development process for taking a bold decision, particularly, for adapting competency-based curricula with a radical modification of public exam systems (by reducing its number as well as waiving exams up to grade III). 

As mentioned above, the newly formulated competency-based curriculum adopted 10 competencies for Pre-primary to Grade XII. This list of competencies encompasses several abilities that are: expression of views, taking logical and beneficial decisions, becoming global citizen with patriotism, capacity of critical thinking and problem-solving, development and fostering relationship and communication, managing physical and mental health, building resilience to disaster risks, peaceful co-existence, solving day-to-day problems, as well as promoting welfare of nature and humanity.       

The listed competencies do not cover all areas of learning development domains that are essential for holistic development of children. It doesn't provide guidance on the pre-primary and early grades' educational skills and competencies, as it doesn't say anything about the reading skills and writing skills, which are the basic pillars of primary education and the main vehicles of all levels of education, including the life-long learning. 

It also doesn't focus on several phenomenal global and national themes and priorities such as democracy, good governance, rule of law, justice, peace and conflict, climate change, human rights, especially women's human rights, etc. So, it's an incomplete set of competencies and that can never support the holistic development of children.      

Subject specific competencies also do not cover some phenomenal competencies. In Mathematics, I-V grades do not include the four basic concepts and skills of mathematics, such as addition, subtraction, division and multiplication, which are necessary in every sphere in life.  

Grade I English does not include knowledge and skills about numbers, it only focuses on alphabets. 'I-V' grades do not incorporate the basic linguistic skills of reading (vocabulary, fluencies and inferential learning) as well as free-handwriting. In addition, 'VI-X' grades do not include the fluency and inferential skills in both forms - speaking and writing.

In Social Science, 'I-III' grades mainly focus on the historical aspects of Bangladesh and the Liberation War, which are sometimes too advanced for children who are only 5-8 years old. Early grades' social science should focus on teaching the children how to live with others, living and non-living things, promote values, cultures, courtesies, conscience as well as roles and responsibilities to others as a member of family, community and society.   

Currently, the world is going through some pressing challenges such as climate change and disaster, conflict and war, autocracy and oligarchy, fragility, discrimination, exploitation, abuse, injustice, corruption, intolerance, inhumanity and so on. As a citizen of a nation as well as a part of the world, everyone needs to have some basic knowledge, skills and competencies. 

Our education system must provide quality education to our children and youth to enable them to realise their individual potential and contribute to the development of society and nation, creating a sense of Bangladeshi nationhood, the concepts of tolerance, social justice, democracy, their local culture and history, based on the basic ideology enunciated in the constitution of Bangladesh, as well as on its independence war. 

Education is not a unilateral thing, it's a multilateral and interrelated matter, therefore, only focusing on a one dimension 'curriculum' will not produce significant positive results until other elements of education are not reviewed and updated in line with the newly formulated competency-based curriculum, particularly teachers, knowledge, skills, competencies, experience and professionalism. 

Based on my long experience in the education sector, I can firmly say that true professionalism of teachers can unlock the full potential of children by crafting child specific teaching-learning approaches at large.                  

Therefore, the NCBT needs to take meaningful initiatives with appropriate attention for modifying the newly formulated curriculum in line with UNICEF's guide for Early Learning Development Standards (ELDSs) - globally recognised a phenomenal guide for early learning development, as well as considering the national needs and priorities, so that the education system can make meaningful contributions to shaping our current and future generation with full potential.

Md. Siddique Ali is the former Country Director (Interim) and Programme Manager, Education, BRAC International in Afghanistan. He has worked at several positions at Concern Worldwide and UCEP Bangladesh for over 25 years. 

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and views of The Business Standard.