Quality of Secondary Education: A Comparative Study between Selected Schools and Madrasahs in Rajshahi District of Bangladesh

Abstract

Quality education is an arrangement that affords all student with capacities and capabilities they need to mature into productive citizens, be well concerned about the sustainable modes of lives, bestow with balanced societies and enhance personal and public well- being with their full potentialities. It includes rich and relevant curriculum for acquiring knowledge, guidelines to learn numeracy and skills for life, trained teachers with standard teaching materials including children-centered approaches, well decorated classrooms and schools, recognized assessment system to encompass knowledge, skills and attitudes, and linkage to the national goals and positive participation in the societies through education. This research has been conducted to achieve the theme of the title "Quality or Secondary Education: A Comparative Study between Selected Schools and Madrasahs in Rajshahi District of Bangladesh". The study has also described the current state of education in the world and explore the role of educators to promote a whole child centered approach to education. Quality of secondary education is very much talked issues in the contemporary world as well as in Bangladesh. Madrasah education is an important part of our education system because it offers religious and modern education where a huge number of people are involved in this sector. In term of quality education, madrasah education belongs to a backward position from the general stream. The present study assesses the quality of secondary education and identifies the performance of student studying at both school and madrasah. This research is quantitative as well as qualitative study based on both primary and secondary data and it has also used questionnaire survey, key informant interview, focus group Discussion for primary data collection. To compare the curriculum-based knowledge between school students and madrasah students, a test has been conducted through a set of questionnaires and analyzing the result of the result of the test of the learners where the result of the learners of the general stream is better than that of the madrasah stream. It has been seen in the study that curriculum-based knowledge of the both institutions are very poor in the context of quality education. In spite of being good result in the public examination, the learners of two streams could not acquire standard knowledge in Bangla, English and Mathematics. There is no significant difference between schools’ learners and madrasah learners in the status of dropout rate and competition. Moreover, trained teacher and infrastructure of schools are better than that of madrasah. Evaluation systems of both streams are defected. The findings of the study require integrated effort to improve quality education such as proper guideline of government, trained teachers, proper evaluation system to ensure quality of secondary education. The findings of the study have helped to identify the real causes of decreasing quality of education in secondary level of Bangladesh and it will provide a useful guideline for the policy makers and the concerned authorities to formulate potential education systems for the learners in secondary level for the development of their rich enrollment in personal, social, and national arena.