Many instances were witnessed across the country, where parents arrived at schools to return free uniform material vouchers which were invalid. There were also instances where parents complained of the insufficient value attached to these vouchers, and where parents were unable to purchase quality material for a specified price. Against this backdrop, several teachers and principals’ associations staged a joint media briefing in Colombo, highlighting the fact that teachers, students and parents, have been inconvenienced by the new voucher system.

Information related to students, teachers and schools will be a click away, from this academic year. The information will soon be available on a website hosted by the National Informatics Centre. The student database will help teachers and parents concentrate on learning levels. The online database will also be used to arrest the drop-out rate among students.

Scandal and large scale cheating. Images of dozens of parents climbing the walls of an examination building to help their children was a scandal and spread like gun powder on the Web. Dozens of persons, mobile telephones and cheat sheets in hand, were to be seen hanging onto window sills of a building where end-of-term exams were being held.

Gross moral turpitude on the part of a few teachers in the form of sexual assault on female students and deviation from professional ethics by a section of teachers in different tiers of education have become a subject matter of discussion, not only among the guardians but also with almost everyone concerned with education in Bangladesh.

Nowadays corruption is not only the focus of the print and electronic media. Most parents and teachers would agree that the public education can play a role in correcting this situation. Students must be made aware of the application of the values and rules.

A bugle call rings out at Zhonglian Judicial College at 1:30 pm, two weeks after the head of the privately funded school was arrested. Anxious students and worried parents insist on staying in the school, located in Fangshan district, after the institute was announced illegal by the Fangshan commission of education on 10 May.