Bangladesh launched assignment-based online education in pandemic. Did it work?

The government launched a system based on assignments to find out the weaknesses of the secondary-level students when the exams were cancelled due to the pandemic, but many wrote the answers from materials available on Facebook, or with the help of teachers.

The teachers gave the students three assignments each week on the basis of short syllabuses, which can be completed in 30 days.

With the classes being held online, the authorities asked the teachers to complete the work to receive the assignments, evaluate, show them to the students with comments, and save at their institutions within Dec 31.   

Mamataz Begum, the mother of a grade-nine student of Rangpur Cantonment Public School and College, said her daughter had faced some problems in preparing the assignments but finally finished those with the help of her friends.

She said most of the parents appointed private tutors to catch up on the gap.

The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education said the students must write the assignments following text books, not from note or guide books and others’ works.

An eighth grader of Bagerhat Government Girls High School said many of them could not attend online classes regularly due to a lack of devices and network issues. They submitted the assignments with the help of the teachers.

Her mother Sharmin Sultana said, “They did not understand many things while doing the assignments. She did not do it enthusiastically as the roll number in the next class would not change. ‘Everyone is cheating, so what’s the problem if I do it?’ she thought.”      

Online classes are not much helpful for learning and it is not possible for all the parents to appoint private tutors, she said and added that the authorities should take steps to find out the weaknesses of the students and close the gaps.

A grade-10 student of Dewaner Char Secondary School in Narsingdi said he had no problem in doing the assignments because many uploaded the answers on YouTube and Facebook.

The students were given short, long and creative questions. The assignments also aimed to enhance their report-writing skills. 

Another 10th grader of Monipur High School in Dhaka said the teachers helped them find the answers in their text books when he was in class nine last year.

“We also took help from the teachers while doing math and accounting assignments. But for the other subjects, we wrote from Facebook,” he said.   

The government said students from grade six to nine were supposed to submit the assignments. But a student of Dhaka Ideal Preparatory School’s class seven said she could not do it because she had not attended online classes regularly when she was in class six.

Naznin Akter, an assistant teacher of the school, said 60 percent of the students submitted the assignments.

Most of the students wrote the assignments from each other’s works, said Zafar Iqbal, an assistant teacher of the Government Muslim High School in Dhaka.

“Photocopy shops supply notes of different schools. After reading guide books for long, the students now think everything has to be in these books. Those who contacted us for help wrote well,” the teacher said.

Nazrul Islam, headmaster of Shaheed Abdul Ali Academy in Rangamati, said 75 percent students of his institution could not submit the assignments as their poor families cannot have afford devices such as smartphone.

Those who could do the assignments did so after some online classes focusing on the assignments, he said.

“We’ve taken note of their weaknesses. We plan to bridge the gaps when regular classes resume,” he added.

Bangladesh is set to reopen the schools and colleges on Mar 30, a year after the shutdown over the pandemic.

Kamrun Nahar, principal of Viqarunnisa Noon School and College, also said they will make up for the loss time after the restart. 

Syed Golam Faruk, director general of DSHE, said they were still working on a national assessment by evaluating the students based on their assignments.

He said at a recent programme that 91 percent students across the country submitted the assignments.