Clp education services

Briefing Note on Options for Education Services
In the Chars Livelihoods Programme
Tom Zizys
Chars Livelihoods Programme
November 2006

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The following paper explores the issue of what education services could be
offered through or in conjunction with the Chars Livelihoods Project. This study
provides:
• An overview of the education system in Bangladesh;
• An assessment of the quality of the education services;
• A description of education services and educational attainment in the CLP
area;
• A discussion of specific sectors of education services (notably early
childhood development, improving primary schools and adult literacy); and
• Some education services options and recommended next steps.
The paper assumes that education is a worthwhile asset. It proposes a set of
educational services interventions that could be tested with respect to both
improvements in educational attainment as well as enhancements of other
livelihood objectives.
The education system in Bangladesh is defined by five categories of educational
service delivery:
• Pre-primary education, which is relatively undeveloped;
• Primary education, which is free and compulsory, consisting of five grades
starting at age six, some 60% of which is delivered through government-
run schools;
• Secondary education, regulated by government but delivered through non-
government institutions;
• Tertiary education, consisting of technical and vocational schools, and
universities;
• Literacy programmes, delivered through small-scale projects by NGOs
and mass literacy campaigns by government.
Bangladesh has made notable improvements in the education sector in the last
two decades. In particular, net enrolment in primary schools now stands at
around 80% (although it drops off to 45% for secondary school), and most
importantly, the proportion of girls is almost equal to the proportion of boys in
primary schools. The dropout rate has declined, although completion rates
remain low, alarmingly so for secondary school certificates. The student
attendance rate for primary school is around 60%, and the quality of education in
government primary schools is very problematic, where a third of students
finishing the five years of primary schooling are not literate. There are also
significant barriers to accessing education, including various ancillary costs (need
to hire private tutors), illegal fees for many purposes and the fact that grant
programmes for the poor only partially reach their intended targets.

Overall, the benefits flowing from educational services are unevenly distributed,
with the poor, rural areas, girls and children of parents with no education being at
a substantial disadvantage.
The status of education services in the CLP chars is pretty dismal. While
students and their families would like to take advantage of educational
opportunities, they face a number of challenges:
• Only under half of the villages contain a school;
• The school facilities are of poor quality;
• Teachers attendance is spotty, they are diverted by other functions and
the teaching quality is low;
• The school management committees are relatively useless;
• In villages where schools are farther away, students have a hard time
attending during the rainy season.
Educational attainment in the chars is very limited:
• 29% of males and 21% of females report having basic literacy;
• Half of the population aged 5 years and over report no education
whatsoever, and four out of five report not completing primary school;
• One-third of students drop out of school on account of scarcity of money,
and another quarter by reason of getting married.
Among potential interventions, several areas offer promise.
The evidence suggests that a properly designed and implemented early
childhood development intervention in the chars would:
• Improve the present and future health of children;
• Increase the likelihood of children attending and staying in school;
• Improve basic competency achievement of children; and
• Potentially relieve parents, in particular mothers, of some of their child-
minding functions, freeing them to attend to other pressing duties.
Improvements to the delivery of primary school education could take several
forms:
• Strengthening the supervisory role of school management committees by
ensuring their membership is appropriate to their function and by
supporting them in assembling necessary monitoring information;
• Finding support for the assertion of the school management committees’
functions through a pilot project sanctioned by the Government of
Bangladesh;
• As an alternative, providing school management committees with financial
resources that would reward achievement of specified performance
targets;
• Supplementing formal schooling with para-teachers who could act as
tutors, particularly for students who have fallen behind;

• Providing alternative schools administered by NGOs;
• Providing alternative schools administered by the private sector, but where
vouchers would need to be provided to poor households (this is a less
desirable option, because of the need for vouchers and the limited
success of educational conditional grants reaching the poor in
Bangladesh).
Delivering adult literacy programmes requires clarity regarding the goals of the
programme and direct and engaged input from the intended beneficiaries in
shaping the programme. Special attention needs to be paid to:
• Designing the curriculum;
• Methods for teaching adults;
• Organizing the learning groups;
• Literacy teacher selection, training and remuneration;
• Ensuring sustainability of the literacy learning; and
• Investing in on-going feedback and evaluation mechanisms.
This report proposes a number of options for improving the educational
circumstances of the CLP target population:
• Implementing early childhood development programmes;
• Strengthening school accountability; these could involve two options:
o Providing only capacity-building support to school management
committees;
o Providing capacity-building support to school management
committees as well as an incentive fund;
• Providing “para-teachers,” again through two possible options:
o Providing supplementary para-teachers where schools already
exist;
o Providing para-teachers in villages where schools do not exist,
either through NGO and private sector schools (the latter would
require support delivered through a voucher programme for poor
households);
• Delivering adult literacy programmes, which could be promoted through a
number of vehicles, including the Social Development groups or the
voluntary savings and loans associations (if the latter are expanded
beyond a pilot phase).
This range of options poses a very attractive possibility for CLP, namely, testing
each of these possibilities, including in various combinations, to compare the
relative effectiveness of each of these options, as well as to test whether there
are cumulative critical mass impacts where several of these interventions are
carried out simultaneously.
In order to move these recommendations closer to implementation, the following
activities are proposed:

• Further literature research to identify specific implementation guidelines
for each of these components; the research undertaken for this report
indicates that there are sufficient studies and evaluations reviewing
operational practice for each of these options that could provide very
useful background for further programme design work;
• Field research and investigation examining Bangladesh experience
relating to early childhood development, primary schooling and adult
literacy programming; this would involve meetings with relevant
implementing agencies, such as BRAC, UNICEF, USAID partners, and
others cited in this report;
• Assessment of existing services and needs in the project target area,
including discussions with existing government primary school structures
(upazila officers and school management committees), as well as existing
NGO initiatives (pre-school primary school and adult literacy);
• Conducting necessary assessments and beneficiary consultations relating
to adult literacy needs;
• Assessing each of the options proposed above in the light of further
literature and field research, and either adding to or narrowing the options;
• Preparation of basic programme outlines for each of the remaining
options; this would include all essential activities and elements, such as
training, supervision as well as programme delivery components, and any
necessary physical inputs, for example, building para (community) centres
or school structures;
• Preparation of a rough budget for each of these components, and
estimating the number of individual component projects that could be
undertaken as pilots, having regard for the ₤1 million for CLP literacy
initiatives (or education initiatives);
• Preparation of Requests for Proposals to invite implementing partners to
offer their services to deliver these components;
• Preparation of an evaluation framework to assess the impact of the
education pilot programme.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
I. INTRODUCTION 1
Project context 1
Assumptions 2
II. DESCRIPTION OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN BANGLADESH 3
Overall structure of education services 3
Pre-primary education 4
Primary education 4
Secondary education 5
Tertiary education 5
Literacy programmes 6
Focus of the rest of this paper 6
General framework for policies, reforms and programme initiatives 6
III. ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN BANGLADESH 8
Access to education 8
Enrolment rates 8
Dropout rates 9
Attendance 9
Gender balance 9
Quality of education 10
Barriers to accessing education 12
Literacy rates 14
Equity (the distribution of the benefits of the educational system) 15
Summary of assessment of educational system in Bangladesh 17
IV. EDUCATION SERVICE DELIVERY IN THE CLP AREA 18
Number of educational facilities 18
Quality of education services 20
Infrastructure 20
Student enrolment 20
Teachers and attendance 21
School management committees 21
Educational attainment 22
Summary of educational services and attainment in the CLP area 23

V. SOME CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO EDUCATIONAL
SERVICES IN THE CHARS
24
Early childhood development 24
Status of early childhood development policy 24
What is early childhood development? 24
Why is early childhood development important? 25
What is the evidence that early childhood development
interventions make a difference?
26
ECD as an integrated approach 27
A concrete example 28
The case for ECD on the chars 29
Improving access to and quality of education 30
Summarizing the problem 30
Options for fixing the current system 30
Does there exist a stick? 30
Could a carrot work? 33
Supplementing the formal education services 34
NGOs and education 35
Higher performance of NGO schools 35
The example of BRAC 36
Lessons on quality education services from the NGOs 37
The private sector and education 38
Prevalence of private schools 38
Fees as deterrence 39
Recap on improving access to and quality of education 40
Adult literacy 41
What do we mean by literacy? 41
What is the impact of literacy interventions in development
practice?
42
What are important considerations in designing an adult literacy
project?
42
Literacy interventions and CLP 44
VI. RECOMMENDATIONS AND NEXT STEPS 45
Recommendations 45
What might these components look like? 45
Next steps 46
BIBLIOGRAPHY 48

I. INTRODUCTION
The following paper explores the issue of what education services could be
offered through or in conjunction with the Chars Livelihoods Project. This study
provides:
• An overview of the education system in Bangladesh;
• An assessment of the quality of the education services;
• A description of education services and educational attainment in the CLP
area;
• A discussion of specific sectors of education services (notably early
childhood development, improving primary schools and adult literacy); and
• Some education services options and recommended next steps.
Project context
The goal of CLP is to halve extreme poverty of the population living within the
island char areas of the Jamuna River by 2015, primarily by targeting 50,000 of
the poorest households. The core mechanisms include:
• Asset Transfer (grant of cash or of a package of livestock, poultry, seeds
and fertilisers, together with extension services support and a cash
stipend for 18 months);
• Livelihoods support though promotion of homestead gardens, pit crops
and fisheries in dead rivers, coupled with appropriate extension services
support;
• Infrastructure work, focusing on raising of homestead plinths, provision of
slab latrines and tube-wells;
• Enterprise support, to enhance entrepreneurial activity and market
linkages;
• Cash for Work, where day labour projects generate income during times of
seasonal hunger (Monga);
• Social Development, involving social mobilization and community
education on a range of topics.
Thus, the basic approach of CLP is to provide ultra poor households with a
significant asset combined with a range of supports that can assist the household
in maintaining that and its other assets.
The project does anticipate other supports that can contribute to the improved
livelihood of the target population. With respect to the topic for this paper, the
relevant portions of the revised project log frame are:1
Outcomes and Impacts
1
CLP, Log Frame Revision Discussion Paper July 18 2006.
1

4 (a) The well being of char dwellers is improved through the provision of
appropriate human development and welfare services.
Objectively Verifiable Indicators
4.4 Most school age children living on island chars should have
opportunity to gain basic literacy and numeracy skills.
4.5 Some illiterate adults should have opportunity to gain minimal literacy
and numeracy. (Minimal literacy means ability to sign name, phonetic
recognition of the Bangla alphabet and basic arithmetic.)
Means of Verification
Actual testing of programme beneficiaries to show actual skill levels.
Programme of actual field-testing of adults.
Comments
The original OVI has been separated into one OVI covering school aged
children and another covering adults. The term ‘literacy/numeracy/learning
for livelihoods’ has been understood to mean basic literacy and numeracy
skills as included in the BRAC basic literacy curriculum. From present
resources the CLP can commit ₤1 million to design and piloting of literacy
work on island chars but a full roll out of such a programme would
probably require further funding and staffing.
The term minimal literacy as defined in the footnote is not a standard
concept but may be more realistic for adults on chars. The concept is that
the individual can write their name and address, read sign boards (slowly)
and do simple sums.
Assumptions
This paper assumes as a working proposition that education is a worthwhile
asset. Thus, this paper does not seek to establish in advance what value-added
that education brings to a livelihood strategy. Instead, it explores a number of
areas where potential educational services could be provided, and proposes that
these interventions could be assessed as part of the overall CLP monitoring and
evaluation, to determine to what degree the addition of these educational
services contributed to the overall improvement in the livelihood of the ultra poor
households.
2

The working hypothesis is that enhancement of education, of the sorts being
proposed, will improve the capacity of the poor to benefit from the transfer of
assets by increasing their ability to build on that asset. Further, that improved
education will contribute to improvements in nutrition and health, particularly
among mothers and children, which will both enhance their quality of life as well
as contribute to cushioning households from health shocks that can precipitate a
decline into deeper poverty.
This working hypothesis is consistent with the widespread assumption of almost
all international development work. As the World Bank’s World Development
Report 2007 expresses it, there are two main reasons why education matters:
First, the capacity to learn is much greater for the young than for older
people, so missed opportunities to acquire skills, good health habits, and
the desire to engage in the community and society can be extremely
costly to remedy. Second, human capital outcomes of young people affect
those of their children. Better-educated parents have fewer, healthier, and
better-educated children. In all developing countries, but especially in the
low-income regions of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, immunization
rates are higher among families whose mothers have some secondary
education. These intergenerational effects lift families out of poverty over
the long term.2
In terms of straight economic benefits, education lifts all boats:
Schooling is persistently found to increase productivity, as reflected in
earnings.
The evidence extends beyond the wage sector—educated farmers are
more likely to adopt new technologies, and almost all studies on
agricultural productivity show that better educated farmers get higher
returns on their land.3
This paper proposes a number of pilot projects that could test a series of
education interventions that could be evaluated both on terms of to degree to
which they improve educational attainment, as well the degree to which they
contribute to broader livelihood improvements.
2
World Bank (2006), p.4.
3
Ibid., p.29.
3

II. DESCRIPTION OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN BANGLADESH
Overall structure of education services4
The education system in Bangladesh is defined by five categories of educational
service delivery:
• Pre-primary education;
• Primary education;
• Secondary education;
• Tertiary education;
• Literacy programmes.
Each of these will be described in turn.
Pre-primary education. Pre-primary education is a relatively undeveloped part of
the Bangladeshi educational system. Officially, as of 2002, the government had
no formal policy on pre-school education or early childhood education. In
practice, some 2 million out of a total of 9 million in the age group 3-5 years
attended some form of pre-school classes in 2000. These involved a little over 1
million children attending “baby” or infant classes attached to some 70% of
primary schools, another 500,000 children attending private nurseries and
kindergartens in urban areas (paid for by parents), approximately 300,000
attending pre-school classes in maktabs and madrassas, and some 50,000
enrolled in para (neighbourhood) centres in the Chittagong Hills districts.5
Primary education. Primary education consists of 5 years of schooling, beginning
at age 6. The government is the main provider of primary school education,
however there exist some 10 other types of schools. Actual enrolment by main
category of school is provided in Table 1 below.
Table 1: Primary Level Institutions and Enrolment, 20006
Number of
institutions
Enrolment
(in millions)
Percentage of
total enrolment
Government primary
schools
37700 10.8 57.1
Registered non-
government primary
schools
19200 4.0 21.2
Madrassas 7100 0.8 4.2
Others* 12600 1.8 9.5
NGO schools 34000‡ 1.5‡ 7.9
TOTAL 110600 18.9 99.9
4
This subsection draws heavily from ACCU-APPEAL (2003), Japan Bank for International Cooperation
(JBIC) (2002) and BRAC (2003c).
5
JBIC (2002), p. 67; USAID (2004), p.16.
6
JBIC (2002), p. 43.
4

* Includes non-government non-registered primary schools (2,100), primary
schools attached to high schools (1,200), community-run schools (3,100),
satellite schools for classes 1 and 2 (3,900) and private kindergartens
(2,300).
‡ The figure for the number of NGO schools represents only BRAC
schools, while the figure for student enrolment in NGO includes BRAC
schools (1.2 million) and other NGO schools (0.3 million).
While these figures are from the year 2000, there are not significant differences
in the proportion of the different types of schools for 2005, except that satellite
schools have since been closed and madrassas have increased by over 60% to
11,900.
Many reports often cite the proportion of government primary school students as
a figure in the 60 percent range or over, as opposed to the 57.1% cited in Table
1. There are two likely reasons for this. For one, government statistics usually
exclude the BRAC enrolment figures. Using the same figures from Table 1 and
excluding the NGO school numbers, then the government primary school share
would be 62.0%. Secondly, Education Watch, the annual publication of a group
of members of civil society dedicated to monitoring the state of primary education
in Bangladesh, often employs extensive surveys to measure the performance of
the educational system as a whole. These surveys, typically involving thousands
or tens of thousands of students, have also provided statistics on the breakdown
of enrolment by type of educational institution. In 1999 and in 2001, Education
Watch reported that in those surveys 67.7% and 61.0% of primary students were
enrolled in government schools, so it may be that these survey figures have
become the accepted proportion.
Primary education policy and administration is managed by the ministry level
Primary and Mass Education Division (PMED), of which the Prime Minister is the
ministerial head. PMED is the apex administrative structure which determines
policy and implements development programmes of the primary and general
adult education (called mass education or non-formal education) sub-sectors. An
independent Directorate of Primary Education exists to oversee the
administrative set-up of primary education. In the respective government
administrative units, the directorate has field officers such as a Deputy Director,
District Primary Education Officers, and Upazila Education Officers. Assistant
Upazila Education officers supervise 15-20 schools.
Secondary education. Secondary education is currently divided into three stages
– junior or lower secondary (classes 6 to 8), secondary (classes 9-10), and
higher secondary (classes 11-12). Enrolment figures are as follows:
Table 2: Secondary Level Enrolment, 1999
Type of institution Enrolment
Junior secondary (VI to
VIII)
616,094
5

Secondary (IX to X) 6,620,845
Higher secondary (XI to
XII)
952,850
Dakhil madrassa (VI to X) 864,717
Alim madrassa (XI to XII) 288,194
TOTAL 9,342,700
The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education is responsible for the
implementation of government policies and development programmes in
secondary education. The vast majority of secondary and higher secondary
schools are non-government (over 97%), with curriculum and most financing
provided by the government.
Tertiary education. In the 2000-2001 academic year, about 114,000 students
were enrolled in the major formal programmes of vocational and technical
education. The annual intake capacity of universities in 1999 was 21,000. Of
these 17,000 were in public universities and 4,000 in private universities. Over
900 degree colleges affiliated with the National University can enroll each year
about 200,000 students including the small numbers admitted to professional
colleges.7
Literacy programmes. Illiteracy among youth and adults has been addressed by
a variety of small and large-scale initiatives, including local projects undertaken
by smaller NGOs, literacy centres promoted by national NGOs, literacy courses
implemented by community and non-government organizations, and a mass
literacy campaign undertaken by the government.
Literacy policy and programming had been directed by a Directorate of Non-
formal Education (DNFE) established in 1996, which has since been downgraded
to a bureau.
Focus of the rest of this paper. Given the practical realities of delivering services
on the chars, this paper will not address tertiary education any further, and will
only reference the secondary education sector insofar as it illuminates certain
broader educational issues.
General framework for policies, reforms and programme initiatives
What does this widespread educational services structure do? A good starting
point for understanding the activities and priorities of the Bangladesh education
sector are a series of international initiatives that Bangladesh participated in
through the 1990s. Clearly, while Bangladesh already had an extensive history of
formal and non-formal education, the international declarations of that decade
7
JBIC (2002), pp. 52-3.
6

provide the backdrop that informs the educational policies pursued by the
Government of Bangladesh.
The initial galvanizing event was the “World Conference on Education for All by
the Year 2000” held in Jomtien, Thailand, followed by the EFA (Education for All)
Summit Conference of Nine High Population Countries held in New Delhi, India
in 1993.8
The ambitious goals set by the EFA initiative for 2000 were:
(1) To raise enrolment rates at the primary level to 95%;
(2) To raise female gross enrolment rate at the primary level to 94%;
(3) To reduce the drop-out rate at the primary level to 30%;
(4) To increase the adult literacy to 62%.
These commitments set the stage for a number of major activities undertaken by
Bangladesh, including:
1) Adopting a National Plan of Action for education (1991);
2) Launching an Integrated Non-formal Education Program (1991), which led
to the creation of the Department of Non-formal Education (1996); its
programmes included:
o Establishment of a pre-primary stream for infants (4-5);
o A non-formal Basic Education Program for out-of-school and school
dropout children (6-10 years old);
o A non-formal education programme for adolescents (11-14 years
old);
o A functional literacy programme for adult illiterates (15-45 years
old);
o Consolidation of acquired skills of neo-literates by providing post-
literacy services;
3) Passing a Compulsory Primary Education Act, stipulating free, universal
and compulsory education nation-wide starting in 1993; this was further
supported by free textbooks for all students, and food for education (a
food ration to 20% of the poor primary school children in rural areas) and
later stipends for children of poor households;
4) To advance female enrolment, setting a quota of 60% females among
newly appointed primary teachers, free tuition for girls in secondary school
(up to Grade X) and stipends for girls enrolled in rural secondary schools
(in the hope that this will provide an incentive for primary school
enrolment) (1991);
5) Government launch of Total Literacy Movement (TLM) with the aim of
removing illiteracy from the country within a decade (1994); this was in
addition to centre-based literacy programmes delivered by government
8
The E-9 countries are made up of Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria
and Pakistan, which together make up more than half (54%) of the world’s population. With UNESCO
providing secretariat support, these countries have collectively undertaken commitments to address basic
education in their respective countries, to share learnings and practices and to engage in common studies
and assessments of their performance.
7

and non-government institutions, and the distribution of free primers for
literacy activities by voluntary organizations;
6) These policy initiatives have provided the basis for a number of targeted
projects, including providing a more comprehensive framework by which
to apply international donor funding; current projects include:9
o Primary Education Development Program (PEDP-II);
o Reaching Out of School Children (ROSC) Project;
o Primary Education Stipend Project;
o Government Primary School Reconstruction and Renewal
Project;
o Development of Registered Non-Government Primary School
Project;
o Post-Literacy and Continuing Education for Human
Development Project (PLCEHD-III);
o Basic Education for Hard-to-Reach Urban Working Children.
The Jomtien conference was followed up by a World Education Forum in Dakar,
Senegal in April 2000, where progress in attaining EFA goals was reviewed and
2015 set as the date for reaching the targets established at Jomtien.
Of all the areas of educational programming, the one which lacks any significant
government policy or activity is the field of early childhood development. This
sector has been largely left to private initiatives (kindergarten schools),
community efforts (the establishment of “baby classes”),10
and donor-supported
NGO projects. Of the latter several prominent ones are the following:
• BRAC operates pre-primary education classes, with some 2500 classes
serving approximately 25 children each;11
• UNICEF has been supporting early learning for children (aged 3-6 years
old) through para (village) centres in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, reaching
44,400 children in 2005;12
• USAID has recently invested in early childhood education, supporting a
Bangladeshi version of Sesame Street (which reaches rural village
children via battery-powered television sets delivered by rickshaws) and
Save the Children’s SUCCEED project, which uses innovative teaching
techniques and games to teach children how to read and count.
9
For a complete list, and to see a short description for each project, see the website of the Bangladesh
Ministry of Primary and Mass Education: <http://www.mopme.gov.bd/Existing_projects.htm>.
10
“In most rural primary schools, children come with their younger siblings because they are responsible
for looking after them. As a result, the primary school teachers were forced to find some way to take care
of the infants who come with their older siblings. Through this necessity evolved an additional class,
known as “small class 1” or “baby class”, taught by a teacher of the school or a high school student
recruited part-time for this purpose.” JBIC (2002), Appendix 1, Momtaz Jahan, “A Position Paper on Pre-
primary Education,” p. 131.
11
BRAC (2003c), p. 11.
12
See UNICEF, Chittagong Hill Tracts Factsheet, p. 4, available at:
<http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/CHT.pdf>.
8

II. ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN BANGLADESH
How have the educational services, programmes and projects performed? Such
a judgment requires assessments along several criteria, as follows:
• Access to education (including enrolment rates, drop-out rates,
attendance and gender balance);
• Quality of education;
• Barriers to accessing education;
• Literacy rates;
• Equity (the distribution of the benefits of the educational system).
In this section, the analysis typically represents average figures for all population
groups. For example, there is no distinction made between students or graduates
of government primary schools and those of NGO schools. In a later section on
NGO schools, it will be clear that students and graduates of NGO schools usually
score far better on most of these criteria. Those distinctions, and the reasons for
these differences, will be highlighted in this later section.
Access to education
Enrolment rates. Bangladesh has certainly made considerable progress in terms
of primary school enrolment, doubling absolute numbers of enrolment from 8.2
million in 1980 to 17.6 million in 2000, including adding more than 5 million
children in the last decade.13
Gross enrolment rates in 2000 reached 96% while
net enrolment was approximately 80% (GER refers to the total number of
students enrolled in primary schools as a proportion of children of that age slated
to attend primary schools; net enrolment is the proportion of primary school age
children enrolled in primary schools; thus, GER includes children who are outside
primary school age who are attending primary school).
Enrolment drops off to 45% of eligible children when they reach the secondary
school level.
As already noted, there is no formal system of pre-primary and/or early childhood
education, although it is provided through such various means as “baby” classes,
private kindergarten schools and donor-funded NGO projects.
Dropout rates. The primary school dropout rate has also shown significant
improvement over a relatively short period of time, falling from 60% in 1990 to
36% in 2000.14
What this means, however, given an 80% net enrolment rate, is
that almost half (48.8%) of children do not complete the primary education cycle.
13
UNDP-SDNP, Bangladesh Education Scenario,
<http://www.bdix.net/sdnbd_org/world_env_day/2001/sdnpweb/sdi/international_day/literacy/2003/bangla
desh_scenario.htm>.
14
JBIC (2002), p.44.
9

Dropout rates in high school have averaged over 50% in recent years.15
However, only half of these remaining 50% who reach the end of Grade X
actually manage to pass the secondary school certificate exam. Using very rough
math, this means that roughly one in ten who enter high school actually earn a
secondary school certificate. Given enrolment rates, this further means that
roughly one in twenty (5%) of Bangladesh youth earn a secondary school
certificate.
Attendance. Attendance estimates vary from 50-70%, but the most commonly
cited figure is 60%.16
Gender balance. This certainly stands as a considerable success, with absolute
enrolment figures for 2004 showing a near-equal split between boys (50.4%) and
girls (49.6%), compared to the 54.7% to 45.3% ratio of 1991.17
The proportions for high school are even more striking, given the larger
imbalance that had existed, which speaks to the success of the various
incentives targeting girls. The following chart, highlighting these interventions,
illustrates the point.
15
Education Watch 2005, p.7.
16
ACCU-APPEAL (2003), p.4.
17
Statistics from the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education website,
<http://www.mopme.gov.bd/students_info.htm>.
10

Table 4: Growth of secondary school enrolment in Bangladesh, 1970-200318
Indeed, the impact may be even greater. The Education Watch 2005 report,
relying on a survey of 23,971 households, selecting by way of a staged random
sampling procedure, claims that net enrolment for each gender for age-eligible
children is 50.6% for girls and 39.6% for boys.19
Quality of education
The most telling statistic regarding the quality of primary education in Bangladesh
is that after completing the five-year primary cycle, 35.6% of students were not
literate even at the initial level, defined as:
“Ability to read and write simple sentences in a familiar context;
possessing skills of four basic rules of arithmetic; limited use of these
abilities and skills in a familiar context in life situations.”20
Other tests show similar poor results. Education Watch 1999 tested children
aged 11-12 years of age in four basic competency areas (reading, writing,
numeracy, life skills) and found that 29.6% satisfied the minimum levels. Basic
18
Raynor (2005), p.88.
19
20
11

achievement was 56.9% among children who had completed five years of
schooling, compared to 20.8% among children with 3 years and 7.5% for those
with only one year.21
Education Watch 2000 addressed itself to the 53 competencies covered by the
government’s primary education curriculum. It developed paper and pen tests to
measure performance among 27 cognitive competencies and administered these
tests to 2509 students. 1.6% of the students had acquired all 27 basic
competencies. Half of the children failed to achieve 60% or more of the basic
competencies. Results in a select number of competencies are presented
below:22
Table 5: Achievement of required competencies by primary school
students
Percentage
achieving
competencies
Bangla 36.5%
Social studies 19.2%
General science 17.3%
Mathematics 11.6%
English 9.4%
Several factors contribute to the poor quality of primary school education:
• The average number of students in a primary school is 273; the average
number of teachers is 4; the student-teacher ratios are 67:1;23
• Official instruction hours are 2.5 hours a day for classes I and II (444
hours in a day compared to 1100 hours in Indonesia and 1235 hours in
China);24
• With tepid attendance on the part of both students and teachers, actual
instruction time is even less;
• Observations of teachers show that in government primary schools:
o Lesson plans are rarely followed;
o Teaching process is teacher, as opposed to learner, focused;
o There is a heavy emphasis on memorization and rote learning;
o Use of teaching aids was almost non-existent.
To be fair, these dispiriting results are not limited to Bangladesh, and appear to
the result of the great emphasis placed worldwide on increasing enrolment in
education over the last decade or so. By greatly increasing the number of
21
JBIC (2002), p.87.
22
Education Watch 2000, JBIC (2002), p.56.
23
Transparency International Bangladesh (2005), p. 2.
24
JBIC (2002), p.57.
12

students, schools were overwhelmed, lacking appropriate space, materials,
qualified teachers and the infrastructure to monitor and supervise the system.
The lesson from the massive education expansion in the 1980s and 1990s
is clear—expanding places rapidly can come at the cost of quality,
reflected in high enrollment rates but low achievement. In Morocco and
Namibia, more than 80 percent of school children stay until the last grade
of primary education, but fewer than 20 percent have minimum mastery of
the material. Young people are already paying the price; many of the large
numbers of adolescents completing primary education do not know
enough to be literate and numerate members of society.25
Barriers to accessing education
In order to ensure that all children can attend primary school, the government
has mandated that primary education be free, and has also made provisions that
textbooks be free. Unfortunately, this desire to eliminate barriers to education
does not quite play out this way in practice.
For starters, households still end up paying in various ways for education, an
average 736 Tk. per nine-month school period (2181 Tk. in urban areas, 524 Tk.
in rural areas). Over a third of this amount is spent on stationary and another
quarter on tutors.26
Nearly 45% of urban students receive help from private
tutors, while 18% made use of such services in rural areas.
Table 6: Average private expenditure per student by class
As far as free textbooks is concerned, according to Education Watch 1999, only
a third of students receive their government-supplied textbooks during the first
month of school. 75% receive them by the end of February and 4% never receive
25
26
Education Watch 2001, pp. 5-6.
13

them. What is worse, anywhere from one out of ten to one out of six had to pay
something for their books.27
This matter of payments extends across a range of “services” and has been
getting worse over time. Transparency International Bangladesh has been
tracking illegal payments in the education system and reports that in 2001 each
primary school student had to pay an average of 47 Tk. for at least nine different
purposes for which no fee should have been paid. By 2005, that figure has risen
to an average of 58 Tk. The charts below illustrate the percentage of children
who pay fees for each purpose and the average payment for each purpose. 28
Table 7: Percentage of students who paid an illegal fee
27
JBIC (2002), p.86.
28
Transparency International Bangladesh (2005), p. 12-14.
14

Table 8: Amount of average illegal fee
Even where students are assisted by government programmes to access
education, corruption insinuates itself. The Primary Education Stipend Program
was approved in 2002 by the Government of Bangladesh as a five-year
programme with an annual budget of $120 million. It provides a 100 Tk. monthly
stipend to children of the 40% lowest income families in the rural countryside.
The identification of the 40% poorest students was to be done by school
management committees assisted by head teachers.
A World Bank study at the start of the programme cautioned:
At present, the targeting methodology does not appear sufficiently well
defined to ensure that the poorest families in Bangladesh benefit, but
rather the poorer families relative to their specific locale (which may not be
terribly poor).29
The reality has turned out to be far worse than the World Bank imagined:
• Two-thirds of the children from the poorest category were not selected to
receive the stipend;
• 27% of children from affluent families did receive the stipend;
• 32.4% of children who were enrolled in the stipend programme had to pay
40 Tk. for their enrolment.30
Literacy rates
29
Tietjen (2003), p.33.
30
Transparency International Bangladesh (2005), p. 17.
15

As noted earlier, over a third of children completing the primary school cycle do
not attain the initial level of literacy. The government has, as part of its
commitment to Education for All, placed significant emphasis on reducing
illiteracy rates.
At one level, the attention and publicity given to literacy has meant that literacy
as a goal, including for women, is an accepted fact in Bangladesh.31
The
extended push for literacy that began in the early 1990s initially contemplated a
range of approaches, including widespread reliance on non-governmental
organizations. By mid-decade, however, the government has decided on a mass
literacy campaign focusing on basic literacy, relying on government delivery. This
emphasis on basic literacy appears to have had an impact on quality, particularly
in terms of sustaining the learning.32
Initial government announcements heralded success, citing an increase in the
literacy rate from 35% in 1991 to 65% in 2003. Indeed, several districts were
actually declared “free from illiteracy.”33
Education Watch 2002 administered a literacy test to a stratified, staged random
sample of 13,145 individuals 11 years of age and older. This study found a
literacy rate among individuals 11 years and older of 41.4%. Moreover, it found
that only one in five (20.4%) had self-sustaining literacy skills (that is, a level of
self-sufficiency that permits people to apply the skills effectively in their life
situations and use the skills on their own for further learning).34
Moreover, the government’s mass literacy campaign appears to have had hardly
any impact whatsoever:
It was observed that exclusively non-school means of education including
the Total Literacy Movement (TLM) and learning at home have a minor
impact on overall literacy situation in the country. The literacy rate was
42.1 percent in the TLM implemented communities and 40.6 percent in
other areas. The literacy rate for 11-45 years age group, which is the main
targeted age group for TLM, showed practically no difference between
TLM communities and the nation as a whole. The average literacy rate in
the districts declared as ‘free from illiteracy’ was 48.2 percent, whereas for
the other districts it is 40.8 percent.35
Initially the government disputed the findings of Education Watch. More recently,
UNESCO Dhaka commissioned a study to clear up the confusion regarding
31
Maddox (2005), p.14.
32
ACCU-APPEAL (2003), p.4, JBIC (2002), p.34.
33
BRAC (2003a), p.3.
34
35
BRAC (2003a), p.7.
16

national literacy rates. Its findings were publicized at a seminar held in May 2006
where it was established that the national literacy rate in 2005 was 41.5%.36
Equity (the distribution of the benefits of the educational system)
The various assessments for the education system as a whole do not affect all
categories of the population equally. By and large, it is a safe generalization to
say that urban areas fare better than rural areas, boys fare better than girls,
children from richer families fare better than those from poor families, and
children whose parents have some education fare better than those whose
mother or father has had no education. Some examples:
• As was mentioned earlier, students in urban areas are 2.5 times more
likely to have a private tutor than students from rural areas; basic
competency achievement among children with tutors was significantly
higher (49.6%) than those without tutors (27.5%);37
• The Education Watch 2003-4 study surveyed children and used food
security status as a proxy for socio-economic status, relying on a sample
of 8,212 households in 10 upazilas; its findings included:
o “In the surveyed upazilas, a child from an ‘always in deficit’ family
had a 30 percent less chance of being enrolled in a school and five
times more chance of dropping out from school compared to a child
from a ‘surplus’ family;
o A quarter of the non-enrolled children cited poverty as the reason
for non-enrolment. Over forty percent who dropped out indicated
poverty as the reason for dropping out;
o In the 6-14 age group of the poorest economic category, one-third
of the children were non-students and at work or unemployed, and
30 percent were students and working at the same time. In the
‘surplus’ group, about the same proportion was both students and
at work, but only 7.5 percent of the children were non-students,
either working or without any work;
o Forty-seven percent of the mothers and 43 percent of the fathers of
primary school children in the upazilas were without any schooling.
Both parents were without education for a third of the children.
These children can be regarded as ‘first generation learners.’
Inability of parents to guide and support their children, and the likely
economic disadvantage of these families, affect how the first
generation learners perform in school;
o Studies of the category labelled as ultra poor, which consists of 20
percent to one-third of the population depending on criteria, showed
36
Dhaka Ahsania Mission website, Bulletin Board, “Seminar of Status of Adult Literacy in Bangladesh,”
<http://www.ahsaniamission.org/bulletin/index.htm#Adult_Literacy>.
37
JBIC (2002), pp.86-7.
17

net enrolment of 65 percent compared to around 80 percent
nationally.” 38
• As noted earlier, various programmes exist to encourage children to
attend school, from free education to free textbooks to stipends for the
poor; as has already been demonstrated, there are various charges
involved in attending school, including a wide range of illegal payments,
and the stipend does not reach the poor; all these factors result in serious
challenges for those least able to afford the cost of education.
National literacy rates show significant discrepancies between women and men,
and rural and urban areas.
Table 10: National Literacy Rates39
The education level of a child’s parents affects his or her ability to achieve basic
educational competency.
Table 9: Basic achievement by level of parent’s schooling and self-
perceived economic status (1998)40
38
Education Watch 2003-4, pp. 5, 8-9.
39
40
JBIC (2002), p.87.
18

And further:
Parental education, especially of the mothers, religious affiliation,
occupation and income, access to communications media, and community
infrastructure had strong correlation with the literacy status of the
population. Three quarters of the people whose mothers have some
education (classes I to V) were literate, whereas 70 percent of those
whose mothers have no education were illiterate. Thirty eight percent of
the households in the country have no literate person; in fourteen percent
of the households all members are literate.41
Summary of assessment of educational system in Bangladesh
Overall, then, one can make the following findings regarding the educational
system in Bangladesh:
• There has been success in increasing enrolment rates, especially among
girls;
• Similarly, the dropout rate has dropped, although completion rates are
low, and alarmingly so for secondary school certificates;
• The student attendance rate, at 60%, is problematic;
41
BRAC (2003a), p.6.
19

• There are serious issues with the quality of the schooling that students
receive, given their low literacy rates and basic competency achievement
rates;42
• There are significant barriers to accessing primary education, including
ancillary costs (such as for stationary and the need to hire private tutors),
illegal fees for a large number of purposes, and the major primary
education conditional grant programme for the rural poor does not reach
its target, and is often skimmed;
• The government’s mass programme for basic literacy has had hardly any
impact – the increase in the country’s literacy rate is due primarily to
increased primary school enrolment;43
• The benefits flowing from educational services are unevenly distributed,
with the poor, rural area, girls and children of parents with no education
being at a substantial disadvantage.
To put the case in a nutshell:
The big picture of primary education deprivation is well known. Despite
commendable progress in the last fifteen years in expanding enrolment,
the large majority of children, as many as two out of three, mostly poor
and disadvantaged in other ways, are growing up without basic skills and
preparation for life.
It is not one or another cause, but a syndrome of poverty and
disadvantage, that causes deprivation in primary education. Contributing
significantly to non-enrolment and dropout are child labour, the
phenomenon of private tutoring, school and home factors related to low
class attendance, and problems of the first generation learners. Almost
half of primary school children have mothers who are illiterate and both
parents are without literacy for one-third of the children. Without the
capacity of school and willingness or ability of teachers to help the child to
catch up when needed, any disruption in schooling sets in motion a
slippery slope of further lag, more absences, and eventual dropping out.44
III. EDUCATION SERVICE DELIVERY IN THE CLP AREA
Number of educational facilities
42
“The poor quality [of primary education] has become the weakest point of the entire superstructure of
education in the country.” ACCU-APPEAL (2003), p.4. It is “…a low-cost and low-yield system…
achieved with the lowest ratio of GNP devoted to education in the South Asia region and one of the lowest
among all developing countries (2.2 percent in 2000).” JBIC (2002), p.78.
43
This is the conclusion of Education Watch 2001, p.8.
44
Education Watch 2003-4, p.i.
20

Information about education services on the chars comes from two sources: the
CLP Baseline Survey Reports (also known as BLS – the quantitative Base Line
Study)45
and the CLP Qualitative Participatory Study (QPS).46
The BLS was conducted between March and August 2005 and involved 3850
households, which were selected by choosing 35 households in one village in
each of 75% of the Union Parishads being covered by CLP. Thus, of 149 Union
Parishads served by CLP, 110 Union Parishads were chosen to be part of the
sample, with one village selected to be studied in each of these Union Parishads.
In addition, a survey was made of services and facilities available in each of the
sample villages. This included a listing of education facilities available.
The following represents the extent of education facilities found in the survey
sample:
Table 11: Education Facilities Identified in CLP BLS Village Sample
TotalNumber
ofVillages
Government
PrimarySchools
NGOPrimary
Schools
Junior/High
School
College
Professional
Institution
Madrasha
(Ebtedia)
Madrasha
(Dakil)
110 48 7 4 0 3 11 4
Government primary schools are the predominant form of education service
delivery in the chars. Extrapolating these results, one can infer that 44% of
villages in the project area have a government primary school. Only 3 of the 7
NGO primary schools are found in a village that does not have a government
primary school.
The government primary schools are more likely to be found in the bigger
villages, although the BLS study shows that this is not exclusively the case.
Table 12: Distribution of Government Primary Schools by Village Size in
CLP Area
Number of households TOTAL <80 81-120 121-160 161+
Number of sample
villages by category of
household size
110 36 22 18 34
45
Chars Livelihood Programme (2005).
46
Chars Livelihood Programme (2006).
21

Number of sample
villages that have a
government primary
school
48 7 11 7 23
Number of sample
villages that have an
NGO primary school
7 0 2 0 5
Number of sample
villages that have a high
school
4 0 1 1 2
Percentage of sample
villages by village size
100.0% 32.7% 20.0% 16.4% 30.9%
Percentage of sample
villages that have a
government primary
school, by village size
43.6% 19.4% 50.0% 38.9% 67.6%
It should not be surprising to find that two-thirds (67.6%) of villages with over 160
households have a government primary school, while only one-fifth of villages
with less than 80 households have one.
A further qualitative study (the QPS – Qualitative Participative Study) was
undertaken through December 2005 and January 2006 to both crosscheck some
of the findings in the quantitative survey as well as to probe deeper with respect
to a number of key issues. This included an in-depth inquiry into the quality of the
primary education services. This was done by examining 10% of the sample
villages targeted by the BLS. Normally, this would have resulted in 11 villages
being selected (out of the BLS’s 110), however the 10% figure was administered
at the Upazila level, and so with rounding up, 16 villages ended up being
investigated.
In terms of the prevalence of primary schools, the QPS findings for these 16
villages confirm the findings of the BLS for the same villages. In the smaller
village sample size of the QPS, the percentage of sample villages that had
primary schools was, at 37.5%, smaller than the finding of the BLS of 43.6%.
Given the larger sample size of the BLS, its findings should take precedence,
unless other evidence can be presented to the contrary.
Quality of education services
The value of the QPS is in its qualitative findings. In each of the six villages
where schools existed, the education services were examined along the following
four categories of assessment, with these accompanying findings:
Infrastructure:
22

• Overall, school infrastructure was found to be poor – schools almost always
lacked enough benches or blackboards; some schools did not have latrines or
tube wells or playing areas;
• A few schools were of adequate standard.
Student enrolment:
• Student enrolment at the schools ranged between 150 and 275 students;
• In general, student enrolment was good – students did wish to attend school;
unfortunately, teachers were not always in attendance, and this affected the
continuing attendance of students;
• Student attendance tended to drop off during the rainy season when they
were unable to negotiate the passage to school;
• Where the school was somewhat more distant, infant level students did not
attend regularly;
• Students tended to drop out early, boys because they engaged in agricultural
wage labour, girls because they married;
• The gender balance was good; in some schools, girls outnumbered boys.
Teachers and attendance:
• Teachers did not demonstrate good attendance; where there were several
teachers, it appeared they took turns being absent (for example, “Two
teachers attend regularly by rotation out of four;” this for a school of 200
students);
• Teachers also often had other duties such as doing survey and census work
or in relation to other government programmes and so had less time to devote
to teaching;
• The regular teachers also subcontract “proxy” teachers from the village to
work on their behalf;
• Overall the teachers’ attendance and the quality of the education they deliver
is very poor; in most of the schools, students cannot read fluently in English
or Bangla a text book from their previous year.
School management committees:
• In most cases, school management committees were either inactive or met
irregularly (usually only to distribute the stipends);
• Several villages noted that the monthly stipend was supposed to be 100 Tk.
but students only received 80 Tk.;
• Where residents were aware of a school management committee, they
desired that it be more active and that it have more clout; some of the
committees were dominated by individuals connected with the Head Master;
23

• Where a committee was formed through discussions with villagers and held
regular meetings, then it also was the case that villagers reported that the
teachers’ attendance and performance was good.47
In villages where there were no schools, most of the reports on those villages
noted that villagers had cited the need for a primary school as one of their priority
concerns. The QPS report articulates the circumstances well:
Children from the ten char villages which have no school face even
greater problems. They need to cross the river during the monsoon.
Because of rain and floods they are unable to attend the school for at least
three to four months in the year. The problem of the school attendance is
exacerbated as the children get wet in the rain and fall ill. Only in one char
can they walk to school during the dry season. Moreover, there is the
problem of getting transport on time to go and return from school. On
average, children need to walk at least half to two kilometres before they
can catch a boat.48
Educational attainment
The BLS provides a number of findings regarding educational attainment on the
chars, illustrated in the following tables.49
Table 13: Literacy rates (10 years and older)
Males Females
Able to read and write 28.6% 20.7%
Not able read and write 71.4% 79.3%
TOTAL 100.0% 100.0%
Self-reporting of literacy ability is not the preferred method for assessing literacy
ability. That being said, these results are not entirely implausible. Given that the
national literacy rate for rural areas for 2001 was 37.2%, and given that the chars
represent a particularly disadvantaged population, these results are not
inconceivable.
Table 14: Percentage Distribution of Household Population (Aged 5 Years
and Older) by Level of Education
Education level Percentage
No education 50.8%
Nursery 4.1%
47
From the comments for that village: “Head Master gives special care for the betterment of the students.
He also organized coaching class for scholar students for their better performance in scholarship
examination.” “[Teachers] regularly communicate with guardians and inform them about their child.”
48
Chars Livelihood Programme (2006), p. 56.
49
All tables are from Chars Livelihood Programme (2005), pp.26-27.
24

Primary incomplete 24.5%
Primary completed 7.9%
Secondary and
above
12.4%
Religious education 0.3%
TOTAL 100.0%
Table 15: Percentage Distribution of Household Population (4-20 Years Old)
by Enrolment Status
Going to school 45.3%
Dropped out 21.7%
Never attended 33.0%
Don’t know 0.1%
TOTAL 100.0%
Reading these two tables together, fully half of the people report no education
whatsoever, and four out of five of people aged 5 and over report never having
finished primary school. Given the low competencies achieved by primary school
completers, one could conclude that the literacy rates reported in Table 13 could
well be lower than what is reported. The fact that this figure includes people who
may still be going to school has less impact given the high proportion of 4-20
year olds who either dropped out or never attended school.
Table 16: Percentage Distribution of Household Population (4-20 Years Old)
by Reason for Dropping Out of School
Major reasons
Scarcity of money 32.0%
Got married 25.6%
Does not like to go to school 15.2%
Have to do work at home 8.8%
No school 5.7%
School too far 4.2%
Minor reasons
Education does not give any
benefits
1.1%
Roads are not safe 1.0%
Did not get admission 0.7%
Lack of social security 0.6%
Don’t have time 0.4%
Disabled 0.1%
Don’t know 0.4%
Other 4.0%
TOTAL 100.0%
25

As can be seen from Table 16, the main reasons for children dropping out of
school are scarcity of money, getting married, not liking school, having to do work
at home, and there being no school or school being too far away. It is not self-
evident whether scarcity of money refers to being unable to pay for school or
having to forgo school in order to earn an income. But clearly one-third of
students drop out for economic reasons. Another one-quarter drops out on
account of getting married.
Summary of educational services and attainment in the CLP area
Overall, the status of education services in the CLP chars is pretty dismal. While
students and their families would like to take advantage of educational
opportunities, they face a number of challenges:
• Only under half of the villages contain a school;
• The school facilities are of poor quality;
• Teachers attendance is spotty, they are diverted by other functions and
the teaching quality is low;
• The school management committees are relatively useless;
• In villages where schools are farther away, students have a hard time
attending during the rainy season.
Educational attainment in the chars is very limited:
• 29% of males and 21% of females report having basic literacy;
• Half of the population aged 5 years and over report no education
whatsoever, and four out of five report not completing primary school;
• One-third of students drop out of school on account of scarcity of money,
and another quarter by reason of getting married.
SOME CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO EDUCATIONAL SERVICES IN THE
CHARS
In this section, several key areas and issues related to education services will be
addressed, as a backdrop for suggestions for potential educational services
initiatives that would be proposed with respect to CLP. These topics are:
• Early childhood development;
• Improving access to and quality of education;
• NGOs and education;
• The private sector and education;
• Adult literacy.
To put the review of these topics in context, this paper will be exploring possible
education sector interventions for the CLP area targeting:
• The pre-school population;
26

• The primary school population; and
• Adults.
Early childhood development50
Status of early childhood development policy. Early childhood development is a
substantially undeveloped field in Bangladesh. While the government has
subscribed to the principles of early childhood development through its adoption
of various international policy commitments, it has been unable to either
articulate a national policy or fund a broadly accessible public programme in this
sector. Instead, it has left the field to be addressed by non-government players.
What is early childhood development? Early childhood development (ECD) refers
to the broad cognitive, emotional, psycho-social and physical development of
children. It is not limited to preparation for formal school per se, but rather the
overall stimulation of children in order to achieve healthy and productive lives.
ECD services include centre-based and home-based childcare and development,
formal and non-formal pre-school programmes and parent education
programmes. ECD seeks to educate and support parents, deliver services to
children (including educational, health and nutritional interventions) and develop
the capacities of caregivers and teachers. ECD goes by different names, with
various organizations adopting their own label: Early Childhood Care and
Development (Jomtien Framework for Action), Early Childhood Care and
Education (UNESCO), Early Childhood Education and Care (OECD), Early
Childhood Care for Survival, Growth and Development (UNICEF) or Early
Childhood Development (World Bank).51
Why is early childhood development important? The enhanced current interest in
ECD has been spurred by recent advances in neuroscience demonstrating that
the development of the brain occurs primarily in the early years of life, laying the
foundation for a person’s learning prospects. The following quotes make the
point in a dramatic fashion:
Research shows that, during key developmental periods, the amount of
gray matter in some brain areas can nearly double within as little as a year
and that this process is followed by a drastic loss of tissue as unneeded
cells are purged and the brain continues to organize itself. By the age of 3
years, the brains of children are 2.5 times more active than the brains of
adults, and they remain this way throughout the first decade of
life….Although growth spurts occur in the brain even beyond early
childhood, the rule for brain development appears to be "use it or lose it"
during the early critical periods.
50
This section relies heavily on UNESCO (2001), UNESCO (2004), USAID (2004), World Bank (2002)
and World Bank (2004).
51
UNESCO (2001), p.7.
27

Brain development in the early years affects physical and mental health,
learning, and behavior throughout life. What, how, and how much children
learn later in school largely depends on the social and emotional
competence and cognitive skills they develop in the first few years of life.
The development of a young child's brain depends on environmental
stimulation, especially the quality of care and interaction the child
receives. The quality of care received, including nutrition, health care, and
stimulation, during the first few years can have a long-lasting effect on
brain development.52
Looking at it from the point of view of risk, inattention to a child’s health and
nutrition will have significant negative consequences for his or her future:53
• Poor nutrition during the prenatal period and the first three years of life is
related to reduced intellectual ability and limited concentration;
• Iodine deficiency during pregnancy results in the birth of babies with
severe retardation of physical growth and psychological development;
• Iron deficiency in infants is associated with significantly lower scores on
infant development scales, as well as lower developmental scores at five
years of age;
• School children infected with intestinal parasites have lower reading and
arithmetic scores than children without infections.
What is the evidence that early childhood development interventions make a
difference? There is now a substantial body of evidence that ECD not only
demonstrably works, but that it is more than worth the cost:54
• Children who participated in the Integrated Child Development Service
(ICDS) in India scored higher on intellectual aptitude tests and had
superior school attendance, academic performance, and general
behaviour than children who did not participate. ICDS is the largest ECD
programme in the world, serving 32 million children;
• In Brazil, poor children who attended 1 year of preschool stayed in primary
school 0.4 years longer than children who did not attend preschool. For
each year of preschool, children had a 7-12 percent increase in potential
lifetime income, with the larger increases gained by children from families
whose parents had the least amount of schooling;
• The Integrated Child Development Project in Bolivia (Proyecto Integral de
Desarrollo Infantil, or PIDI) provided non-formal, home-based day care
and nutrition and education services to young children six months to six
years of age in poor, predominantly urban areas. The programme has
improved cognitive test score outcomes for the older age group by roughly
five percent and even higher for children who participated more than a
year in the programme. Virtually all (95-100 percent) of the children
52
Mary Eming Young, “Introduction and Overview,” in World Bank (2002), pp.4, 5.
53
All examples are from USAID (2004), pp.15-17.
54
Taiwo and Tyolo (2002); USAID (2004), p.7 and World Bank (2002), p.6. For references to the actual
evaluations, see these reports.
28

participating in the programme subsequently entered primary school,
compared to only 20 percent for non-participating children.
Table 17: Early childhood interventions (at ages 1-5) can have lasting
effects on young people (at ages 13-18)55
Note: In Turkey, the intervention
was for four years between ages 3
and 9, and involved both parenting
skills training and daycare. Only the
parenting skills had an effect at the
follow-up at ages 13–15. In Jamaica,
children ages 1–2 received two years
of professional psychosocial
stimulation, and follow-up was at
ages 17–18. Both are controlled
impact evaluations.
The benefits actually accrue more to the disadvantaged:
• The ICDS in India (cited above) demonstrated that ECD involvement
hardly affected the dropout rates of the richer children but reduced drop-
out rates of the poorest children by 46 percent;
• Research on child nutrition in the Philippines showed increases in school
attendance of 1.1 to 2.1 academic years for the most malnourished
children, but only slightly higher effects for better-nourished children.
ECD as an integrated approach. The importance of addressing childhood
development as a whole, and not just focusing on academic pre-school activities,
is important. Taking an integrated and broader view, incorporating attention to
health and nutrition, as well as parenting skills and supports, is a critical aspect of
the ECD approach. Thus, in terms of nutrition:
• A significant improvement in the nutritional status of children does not
automatically improve psycho-social development;56
• Implementing interventions in health, nutrition, and mental stimulation
together can have a greater effect than any intervention applied alone. A
study in Jamaica, for example, showed how either cognitive stimulation or
supplementary feeding can increase cognitive abilities of a malnourished
55
56
UNESCO (2001), p.9.
29

child, with the combination of both elements together having the greatest
overall impact.57
In terms of parenting skills and knowledge:
• Mothers with low literacy require more education and training to become
effective caretakers;58
• An evaluation of a 1994-96 Save/USA project in Bangladesh, which
developed and tested home-based parent education materials with four
women’s groups, found that mothers who were aware of child
development influenced child behaviours at school. Project children
continued education longer and achieved more than children of non-
project mothers in terms of retention and performance in Baby Classes
and grade one;59
• In an ECD programme in Turkey, both preschool activities and
motherhood training separately improved overall development of the
young children in the programme, but the greatest short-term effects came
from a combination of both. In the longer-term, children whose mothers
had participated in the training performed significantly better in school, had
higher self-esteem, were more ambitious, and showed improved social
behaviour.60
Indeed, in the context of the CLP chars, it may well be that aspects other than
educational benefits, such as the current and future health of their children, will
make proposed ECD interventions more attractive to parents. According to the
USAID study, which explored the social context for early childhood development
programmes in Bangladesh, there was a concern that promoting ECD as an
educational programme may backfire.
When visions of job prospects do not include occupations that require
literacy, any additions to the educational train may not be well received.
Other parents who spoke of long-term educational limitations spoke of
marriage, both for sons and daughters. The son should begin to earn
money and bring home a daughter-in-law to help with domestic labour as
soon as possible; the daughter should not seek an education beyond
grade eight so that she will not delay marriage too long or inhibit
possibilities for an advantageous match.61
The point is that ECD programmes may be better received if they also
emphasize health and nutritional benefits and not only future educational
attainment. That being said, anecdotal evidence from the chars suggests that
parents are very keen on appropriate educational opportunities for their children.
57
USAID (2004), p.7.
58
UNESCO (2004), p.16.
59
USAID (2004), p.33.
60
USAID (2004), p.7.
61
USAID (2004), p.22.
30

A concrete example. What could an early childhood development initiative look
like on the chars? An example from Bangladesh offers an attractive illustration.62
The Chittagong Hill Tracts consist of three districts in the southeast of
Bangladesh. It is a remote area, comprised of a number of indigenous ethnic
groups, that had experienced conflict for several decades. The vast majority of
the population live in rural areas that are disadvantaged and remote.
UNICEF’s Integrated Community Development Project, begun in 1997, has
sought to decentralize services to the village (para) level. Their innovation has
been the para centre, the local delivery point for social services, each of which
has a catchment area of 25-30 households. To date, 2220 para centres serve
over 1800 paras. These centres are run by local community members, usually
women, who have at least a grade eight education and who receive an initial
one-month of training and follow-up refresher programmes.
These para centres provide:
• A venue for early learning for children aged 3-6 (pre-school);
• A place for children and women to receive micronutrient supplements;
• A setting for health service delivery from Health and Family planning
departments to offer immunization as well as other preventative and
curative services;
• A demonstration site for sanitary latrine, safe water use and other
appropriate technologies;
• A service delivery place for formation of groups by different Government of
Bangladesh agencies and NGOs;
• An information centre for the community, containing a map of the para and
many other social indicators pertinent to that community;
• A meeting place for the community; and
• In isolated areas, primary schooling for children (class 1-3).63
In 2004, more than 44,000 children received pre-primary education through these
centres. Recently, UNICEF partnered with the World Food Program to deliver
fortified biscuits containing vitamins and minerals to 18,000 of these CHT pre-
primary school children as part of a pilot project. The aim of the project is to help
alleviate micronutrient deficiencies in pre-school children while also improving
their attendance and enrolment in pre-school. The biscuits are specially made to
help school children focus and concentrate better and garner more energy to
participate in educational activities.64
Some results of these interventions:
62
UNICEF, Chittagong Hill Tracts Factsheet, available at: <http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/CHT.pdf>
63
UNICEF, Chittagong Hill Tracts Factsheet, p.4.
64
UNICEF, Media Announcement, April 2, 2006, “UNICEF-WFP Launches Food for Education project in
CHT,” <http:www.unicef.org/Bangladesh/media_1832.htm>
31

• Immunization status has improved in all the CHT districts over the last few
years. Measles immunization for 12-23 month old children has increased
from 34 per cent in 1997 in one district to 75 per cent in 2003;
• For education, the net primary school enrolment for boys and girls has
increased since 1997. For example, in one district the girl's enrollment has
increased from 62 per cent in 1997 to 75 percent in 2003.65
The case for ECD on the chars. In terms of an effective and lasting impact on
human development, ECD offers the highest impact for the lowest cost.
Investments before a child enters school (as compared with remedial
programmes) have high payoff. Well-targeted ECD programmes cost
less—and produce more dramatic and lasting results—than education
investments at any other level. Early child development and education
have positive effects on achievement, grade retention, special education,
and high school graduation and socialization. These positive effects can
change the development trajectory of children born into poverty.
By the time poor children reach kindergarten age, they already have had
an unequal chance to be ready for school or learning. Interventions in
early childhood particularly benefit poor and disadvantaged children and
families.66
The evidence suggests that a properly designed and implemented ECD
intervention in the chars would:
• Improve the present and future health of children;
• Increase the likelihood of children attending and staying in school;
• Improve basic competency achievement of children;
• Potentially relieve parents, in particular mothers, of some of their child-
minding functions, freeing them to attend to other pressing duties
(although much child-minding is carried out by siblings).
If an ECD programme were delivered through a multi-purpose local centre such
as the CHT para centres, then one could also imagine bundling basic public
health information in addition to health and nutrition services through the same
vehicle, with the potential for important health impacts as well.
Improving access to and quality of education
Summarizing the problem. Taking the condition of the educational system in
Bangladesh as a whole, and having regard to the particular circumstances of
schooling in the chars, brings to the fore a number of concerns:
65
UNICEF, Chittagong Hill Tracts Factsheet, p.5.
66
32

• Access to school facilities: For half of the villages, physical access to a
school can pose challenges, particularly during the rainy season;
• Barriers to education: In principle, costs should not be a barrier, in a
system where education is free, where textbooks are provided free and
where there is a government stipend for poor households; evidence
relating to Bangladesh generally and to the chars specifically indicates
that these benefits are not fully reaching the poor;
• Conduct and performance of teachers: Teachers are directly responsible
for a number of the failings in schools:
o Their attendance is problematic, meaning that less teaching takes
place and discouraging students from attending school;
o The quality of their teaching methods is questionable;
o They constitute one part (though not the only part) of the system
that is resulting is costs to parents (the need to hire private tutors,
illegal fees and not receiving stipends).
There are two potential responses to these circumstances, either fix the system
as it stands in the chars or provide an alternate. Two subsequent sections will
speak to the question of alternatives, in terms of NGOs or the private sector. The
section immediately following will focus on options for fixing the current system.
Options for fixing the current system. The essential issue here is that one is
trying to get the system to do what it is supposed to be doing. The two classic
options for stimulating performance involve either using a stick or using a carrot.
Does there exist a stick? In theory a structure exists which should have served
somewhat as a stick – the School Management Committees (SMCs). In practice,
SMCs, while given a broad role in primary school management, have no real
power. In particular, they have no authority over spending decisions. The reality
is that many have become captured by political interests and by cronies of the
school head master, and people both on and off the committee do not really
know its functions.67
Yet it is striking to find in the qualitative survey of the chars how often parents
referred to the SMCs and complained of how the committees had been diverted
from their task. It suggests that people have an idealized version of what an SMC
could do. And for good reason, for there are, indeed, instances of active and
engaged SMCs making a difference.68
What this means is that an implicit “stick”
exists, people understand its purpose, only that in most cases it does not work.
A number of international donors projects aimed at reform of the education
system cite improvement of the functioning of SMCs as one of their key activities.
For example, the USAID website states, under Improving the School System:
67
Education Watch 2003-4, p.15.
68
Ibid. As well, the one SMC that was performing well in the chars coincided with a school that received
positive ratings. See the section on education services in the chars, above.
33

For systemic change, USAID will strengthen the ability of parents,
community leaders, and associations to lobby for better school
performance and reform. This includes strengthening local NGO partners
and their ability to work with local parent-teacher associations and school
management committees. Corruption and built-up resistance to reform will
also be addressed.69
Similarly, Save the Children USA’s SUCCEED project proposes to achieve its
goals by, among other things:
Community initiatives that generate children's success and school
accountability.70
There is clearly an expectation, both among parents and among donors, that with
the right practices and the right coaxing SMCs could bring accountability to a
system that is currently impervious to the demands of parents. Certainly one
option therefore has to be whether there are a set of interventions and practices
that could make more effective what in most cases has been a rather lame stick.
If voice is to amount to anything, then this is one vehicle for which it has been
designated to be the driver.
In order for SMCs to perform their functions in the current circumstances, they
would either have to be constituted (for the ones that have gone dormant) or
reconstituted (for the ones that have been captured by cronies). At the very least,
they should be required and assisted to collect information about the
performance of schools. This could include such basic data as:
• Teachers’ attendance;
• Student enrolment (compared to eligible children population);
• Student attendance (compared to number enrolled);
• Student dropout rates;
• Student achievement;
• Timely delivery of textbooks;
• Rating of school facilities;
• Distribution of stipend to intended beneficiaries.
At the very least, collecting such data, and comparing it to other data collected in
other CLP village schools, would provide ammunition to the SMCs and to
parents. To add to the metaphors, while the SMCs may not have bite,
marshalling such evidence could at least give substance to their bark. Such an
approach would also need to include facilitating the interactions between the
community and the SMC, between the SMC and the teachers, and between the
69
See <http://www.usaid.gov/bd/education_response.html>.
70
See <http://www.savethechildren.org/education/early.asp>.
34

SMC and upazila education authorities. This is the sort of intervention typically
involved in strengthening the community’s engagement with school authorities.71
This sort of initiative perhaps could be sanctioned by the Government of
Bangladesh as a type of pilot project, to test these kinds of approaches, as
suggested in the study prepared for the Japanese Bank for International
Cooperation:
Support can be provided to piloting models of effective decentralization in
a few districts in the sub-sectors of primary, secondary, and general non-
formal education through establishing district education authorities and
effective functioning of upazila and schools level planning and
management, about which there has been much rhetoric and little action.72
One further important area where there is great dissatisfaction among many
stakeholders and where accountability structures could make a difference is with
respect to the hiring of teachers:
The process of teacher recruitment was seen by stakeholders at the local
level as a major impediment to improvement of quality in primary
education. SMC members, parents, teachers, Assistant Upazila Education
Officers and Upazila Education Officers all expressed concern about
infractions and manipulation of rules and regulations regarding the
recruitment of both Government Primary School and Registered Non-
Government Primary School teachers leading to recruitment of teachers
who were not qualified to be teachers. In the case of GPS the violation of
rules was caused at the district level by increasing the weight of oral
interviews in selection, thus making the process vulnerable to improper
influence. For RNGPS, where SMCs were responsible, the system was
seen as dominated by cronyism instead of application of criteria.73
To add a further level of on-the-ground detail, it is illustrative to note the concrete
factors which were identified as contributing to success in six primary schools
(five of which were government primary schools) in Bangladesh:
1) The schools have very good links with the communities they serve;
2) The leadership of the head teachers is considerable (indeed, almost
autocratic);
3) The majority of the head teachers oversee the classroom activities of their
teachers and provide useful feedback;
4) Influential people of the communities are involved in the SMCs (although
the process is hardly democratic or participative);
71
See USAID (2006) and Education Watch 2003-4.
72
JBIC (2002), p.127.
73
Education Watch 2003-4, p.13.
35

5) The teachers try their best to teach the students in the classrooms. Except
few cases, all the teachers are capable in teaching and are punctual in
their duties. They sometimes provide extra care to the slow learners;
6) A strong emphasis is given to the preparation of scholarship examinees;
7) The attendance rate of the students is higher than the national average;
8) The government schools are considered good schools by their respective
educational officers and so are favoured with more finances and more
teachers;
9) The majority of schools have their own additional sources of income. 74
The point is, quality education is made much more possible by strong leadership
of individuals, to be found among the head teacher and key members of SMCs.
In the absence of such strong leadership, perhaps more participation and
accountability to a larger group of engaged participants may be the only
alternative.
One USAID report on strengthening accountability in schools cites five factors:75
1) Strengthen client voice (foe example, by creating feedback mechanisms);
2) Improve management (incentives for performance);
3) Provide better information to clients (data and benchmarks);
4) Clarify roles and responsibilities;
5) Increase incentives and consequences.
A number of these items have now been already addressed above. A further
twist would involve incentives, discussed in the section below.
Could a carrot work? A further option would be to see if SMCs could be made
more effective by giving them leverage. Such leverage could involve a fund,
administered by a reformed, responsible and responsive SMC, which could
provide incentives. Teachers could be awarded incentive pay based on criteria
determined by the SMC. This could include reaching prescribed targets relating
to such measurable indicators such as:
• Teachers’ attendance;
• Student attendance;
• Student dropout rates;
• Student achievement;
• Stipends reaching intended beneficiaries.
The fund would have to be financed by outside sources (a donor-funded
programme). It would have the advantage of giving the SMC significant clout
while also providing an incentive to teachers. For some of these items, such as
teacher attendance, the capability to meet the target set by the SMC requires
only a simple change of behaviour on the part of the teacher. In other areas,
74
BRAC (2004), p.10-11.
75
USAID (2004a), p.4.
36

teachers would require training in order to improve their abilities to enhance the
quality of the teaching (and thus the quality of the learning).
Supplementing the formal education services. A third option would involve
layering additional teaching services on top of what is already provided by the
formal system, that is, providing “teacher’s aides” or “para-teachers” who could
supplement the teachers’ efforts. This could be done in two ways:
(1) Providing additional “teachers” (actually aides) in the classroom, reducing
the student-teacher ratio;
(2) Offering para-teachers as tutors to students.
As it turns out, both of these approaches have been tried in India and the
consequences have been tested by way of random evaluation.76
An example of
the first intervention involved placing a second teacher in an NGO-operated non-
formal education centres in various Indian villages. These centres had been
plagued by high teacher and student absenteeism. A second teacher (when
possible, a woman) was added to each school, in the hope of increasing the
number of days the school was open, increasing children’s participation, and
increasing performance by providing more individualized attention to the children.
By providing a female teacher, it was also hoped to make the schools more
attractive for girls. The results were monitored and compared to a comparable
set of schools run by the same NGO where no such additions were made. The
programme did marginally reduce the proportion of days a school was closed
(down from 44% to 39% of the time) and girls’ attendance did increase by 50%.
However, there were no differences in test scores.
In the second type of intervention, an NGO hired young women from the local
communities to provide remedial education in government schools to children
who had reached grade 2, 3 or 4 without having mastered the basic grade 1
competencies. Children who were identified as lagging behind were pulled out of
the regular classroom for two hours a day to receive this instruction. On average,
after two years the programme increased student test scores by 0.39 standard
deviations. Moreover, the gains were largest for children at the bottom of the
distribution: children in the bottom third gained 0.6 standard deviations after two
years. The study found that hiring remedial education teachers from the
community appears to be ten times more cost-effective than hiring new teachers.
The next two sections explore the option of providing an alternative school, in the
first instance by way of a discussion about the experience of NGO schools in
Bangladesh.
NGOs and education
In 2000, 1.5 million students were taught in NGO schools operating in
Bangladesh, making up 7.9% of the primary student enrolment. 1.2 million, or
76
The following two examples are taken from Duflo and Kremer (2003), pp.14-16.
37

over 6% of all primary school students in the country, were taught by BRAC,
making it the largest non-formal education service provider in the world.77
In the earlier section assessing the education services in Bangladesh, various
indicators highlighted the poor performance and poor quality of the education
system as a whole. These findings relied on figures for the entire population, with
the qualification that NGO schools perform much better. This section will provide
evidence of and explanations for the better performance of NGO schools.
Higher performance of NGO schools. On a number of criteria, NGO schools
outperform government primary schools.
Table 18: Attendance Rates of Students by Type of School, 199878
NGO schools
NGO schools (non-formal primary) have the highest student attendance rates of
all categories of schools, and outperform government primary schools by 80.7%
to 58.1%.
Absenteeism among teachers was over 20% in registered and unregistered non-
government schools, 12.7% in government schools and 5.3% in NGO informal
schools.79
One very relevant statistic is in relation to the measured outcome of NGO school
performance. A 1998 study compared the performance of different schools in
terms of a number of competencies.
Table 19: Basic Achievement and Literacy by Children Aged 11-12 Years
old Currently Enrolled in Class 5 by Type of School, 199880
77
Watkins (2000), p.311.
78
JBIC (2002), p.87.
79
JBIC (2002), p.86.
80
JBIC (2002), p.88.
38

Percentage of children currently
enrolled in class 5 achieving:
Basic
Education
(4 Areas)
Literacy
(3 Areas)
Government Primary 37.7% 59.0%
Non-government Primary 34.7% 53.4%
Non-formal (NGO)
Primary
66.3% 76.8%
Madrassa 25.8% 66.0%
A more striking difference is found in a national literacy survey conducted in
2001. Of all students who had a full 5-year cycle of primary school, 35.6% were
not literate at the initial level. Among those who attended non-formal primary
education programmes, 97% achieved literacy on completion of 5 years.81
These results attract attention. Between fiscal year 1990 and 1998, non-formal
education saw its share of development expenditure in the education sector in
Bangladesh increase from 1.5% to 9.2%.82
The example of BRAC.83
The dominance of BRAC in the NGO school sector and
the success of its approach merit particular reference. BRAC initially became
involved in education programmes in the mid-seventies, offering functional
literacy programmes to adults, where mothers began asking about education for
their children. Initially a three-year curriculum for grades I to III was developed,
targeting the never enrolled and dropouts. (As well, a second programme was
later developed targeting 11-14 year olds who had dropped out.) Teachers were
recruited from among married women in the same village who had 9 years of
education. In order to ensure effective education, BRAC instituted a number of
features relating to training and supervision of the teachers and accountability of
the schools to their community. The recognition of local input included adjusting
the school calendar to have regard for seasonal labour demands, determined by
way of consultation with parents.
Books and supplies for students, supervision of teachers and teacher training
absorb two-thirds of the cost, which are kept low because teachers are not paid a
salary, but a stipend (around US$12 per month). The average cost per child
educated in a BRAC school is approximately US$20 per year, compared to $51
in Government Primary Schools (where 90% of the cost goes to the salaries of
teachers).
81
82
JBIC (2002), p.82.
83
This sub-section relies heavily on BRAC (2003c) and Watkins (2002).
39

The first evaluation by the World Bank in 1988 showed that although BRAC
students came from lower socio-economic groups than those found in
Government Primary Schools, they performed as well in reading and writing
tests, although they scored lower in mathematics and social studies. This initial
success led to a major expansion of the programme, fuelled by significant donor
support.
Perhaps the most telling statistic indicating the value of the BRAC schools is that
over 90% of the graduates of BRAC schools enrol in secondary school.
This is not to say that all is rosy with BRAC schools. A recent BRAC report
expressed alarm at dropping competency ratings for BRAC graduates:
The overall performance of the programme is decreasing significantly. On
average, the proportion of graduates satisfying the criteria of basic
education was 73.7% in 1995, 69.3% in 1997, 68.7% in 1999, and 62.5%
in 2001. The literacy rates were 78.5%, 75.4%, 74.9%, and 71.3%
respectively in 1995, 1997, 1999, and 2001.84
While these results are certainly worrisome for BRAC, they are also a good
illustration of why BRAC is successful – constant monitoring and analysis of
performance, and transparency of their operations, makes accountability,
feedback and improvement possible.
It is worth citing Education Watch 2000’s assessment of why BRAC schools are
successful:
• There is strict accountability and a strong system of supervision regarding
teacher performance. Teachers are on the job, every day, on time, which
upholds the discipline of the school schedule and encourages regular
student attendance. This would be regarded as a minimal condition for
any institution to function properly, but which is not the norm in formal
primary schools;
• The two-week pre-service training for teachers is followed by regular
monthly refresher training focusing on practical classroom and pedagogic
issues; teachers follow a strict routine of daily lesson plan which lays out
detailed steps and activities leading to the defined outcome for each day;
• The essential learning materials and textbooks are provided to all children;
these are made available on time and in sufficient quantity; parents are
spared any direct costs in fees or for buying learning materials, which is
especially important when the target is poor families;
• A close involvement of even illiterate parents in their children’s education
is encouraged by teachers; the small centres of 33 children in each serve
84
BRAC (2003), p.5.
40

a neighbourhood establishing a rapport between the community and the
school.85
Lessons on quality education services from NGOs. The experience of NGOs in
delivering quality education in Bangladesh, in particular to poor households,
exemplified by the performance of BRAC, offers the following guide on what
contributes to these results:86
• Strong performance accountability of teachers and schools;
• Smaller class size;
• Emphasis on teaching training and supervision, including on-going, in-
service training;
• Ensuring that learning materials are available on time for all students;
• Meaningful involvement of parents in the school and better communication
between parents and teachers about their children;
• Eliminating direct and indirect, official and informal, costs to poor
households;
• Eliminating the need for private tutors;
• Adapting the school routine to the local community, including adjusting
school schedules to suit seasonal agricultural workloads.
The private sector and education
If government primary schools offer a relatively poor quality of education, and if
NGO schools provide such an attractive alternative, the question then gets
posed, is there a role for the private sector to deliver fee-based primary
schooling, including to the poor? Indeed, in terms of ability to pay, household
expenditures amount to 60% of the per student public expenditure in primary
education in Bangladesh.87
Approximately a quarter of these payments are for
private tutors, as well as for various illegal fees. If the private sector could deliver
a quality product, might it not be able to sustain itself financially capturing some
of these payments that these households already are making?
Prevalence of private schools. A recent study suggests that such is indeed
already the case in many parts of the developing world.88
This study was based
on an investigation of a number of designated poor areas in five countries
(China, Ghana, India, Kenya and Nigeria), which surveyed how primary
education was being delivered to the poor. The findings:
What the research teams found points to an educational revolution that is
taking place. In the poor urban and peri-urban areas surveyed, the vast
majority of children were found to be in ‘budget’ private schools.
85
JBIC (2002), p.58.
86
Adapted from BRAC (2003c), pp.13-14; Education Watch 2000, p.5; JBIC (2002), p.92.
87
JBIC (2002), p.80.
88
Tooley (2006).
41

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