Video clip from Indian school shared as 'training programme for teachers' in Bangladesh

"This is the new education curriculum of Bangladesh. Wow! What a wonderful education system," reads a Bengali-language caption with a Facebook post shared here on December 1, 2023.

The post that racked up more than 2,500 views shows a man reciting a Bengali poem about a bicycle vendor while portraying the character, while others follow his cue and act along.

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Screengrab of false Facebook post taken on January 17, 2024

The video surfaced on social media platforms ahead of the implementation of Bangladesh's amended primary and secondary education curriculum which will be partially effective in the 2024-2025 school year.

The education ministry said the new curriculum will allow students to engage more in class activities, with less focus on learning through repetition. Critics have said the reform will attract children to less important classes and turn them away from genuine lessons (archived here).

The clip has been shared with similar claims elsewhere on Facebook here and here.

But the claim is false. The video shows a teachers' training programme in Assam, a northeastern state in India.

Video from India

A reverse image search on Google found the same video shared on the Facebook page of Ratan Lal Saha -- an assistant teacher at a primary school in Dhubri district of Assam -- on November 17, 2023 (archived here).

Dhubri is a district town in the Indian northeastern state of Assam where some 30 percent of the local population speaks Bengali.

The caption of the post reads: "FLN Training on Poem Poster for Oral Language Development."

Saha has told AFP the video was filmed in a school in India and it shows him teaching oral language development skills to teachers from another local school.

"The training took place on November 16,  and I posted the video on Facebook the following day," he said.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in false posts (left) and the video uploaded on Saha's Facebook account (right):

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Screenshot comparison of the clip shared in false posts (left) and the video uploaded on Ratan Lal Saha's Facebook account (right)

Saha's Facebook page has videos of similar training sessions that can be viewed here and here.

A Bengali-language sign in the background of Saha's video has also identified the course as having taken place in Assam and that the course was a "five-day long teachers training programme".

Below is a screengrab of the video with the sign highlighted by AFP:

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Screengrab of the original video with the sign highlighted by AFP.