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The Political Settlement & Basic Education Quality in Bangladesh
- 1. The Political Settlement& Basic Education Quality in Bangladesh Naomi Hossain, IDS Sussex Mirza Hassan, BRAC University Khondoker Shakhawat Hossain Md. Sajidul Islam Md. Ashiqur Rahman, BRAC University
- 2. Intro and Overview •The puzzle: access without learning • Approach – tracing reform agenda from elite politics to frontline • Elitist competitive clientelism supports – weak consensus on the need for quality – frontline discretion (weakly programmatic at point of delivery) – protection of teachers from accountability pressures
- 3. The political settlementin Bangladesh • Mainly competitive clientelistic since 1991 • Elite consensus on basic ed – Priming population for development – Space for NGOs & aid • Vehicle for nationalism – Highly competitive – with expansionary effects
- 4. Ed quality &the political settlement • Political goals met by low quality mass schooling – No industrial elite pressure for higher average skills • Quality is no priority: weak winners/strong losers – Donors have owned quality agenda – policymaking is weakly centralized, civil society not v influential – teacher associations enjoy ‘invisible power’ over quality agenda • Learning outcomes & time-on-task low – Secondary schooling to get to primary level – Pupils get 20-50% of international average hours learning
- 5. Promoting higher qualitylearning • Reform programmes nominally about quality (currently PEDP3 2011-15) – In practice quality = size, resourcing, access – Teacher performance measures all carrot, no stick – Some accountability reforms been shelved – But measures of student learning may make a difference (not at school level)
- 6. Lessons from thefrontline • Rural & urban GPSs in Narayanganj • Determinants of teacher effectiveness – Professional rewards – Financial incentives & time pressures – Accountability pressures
- 7. Reflections on PSAand education provision • PSA helps to explain access without learning – Pol settlement supports wider not better basic ed – Teacher immune from accountability • Informal accountability can be strong (hypotheses needed) • Class & gender biases hardwired into failing reforms
Editor's Notes
- #2 Many people involved in this piece of work
- #3 Bangladesh is of course very interesting because it was so celebrated for its achievements in expanding access to basic education to girls and the poor from the 1990s. But like many low (or lower middle) income countries, it has not solved the problem of teaching kids much once they get them into the classroom. Approach here like the other papers – tracing ed qquality reforms through from elite politics to the frontline, how they play out in selected schools. Key points here are that an elitist cometitive clientelistic political settlement supports a watery consensus on the need for quality that nobody wants to stick their neck out to support, a great deal of effective frontline discretoin, signalling the weakness of implementation and effective protection of teahers from accountability pressures from the top, in which they are of course not unlike public school teachers everywhere.
- #4 After varied phases of dominant predatory with some developmental state aspects through the 1970s and 1980s, since 1991 the political settlement in Bangladesh has been mainly an elitist competitive clientelist setup – elites do need to compete over social provisioning to ensure legitimacy to some extent. Main dynamics of the PS here have meant an effective elite consensus on the need for basic services including education, as a means of priming the population for development – and to be acceptable for aid. Created space for NGOs. But there is also a highly competitive element to it in that basic ed is an important ideological space for rehearsing competiing nationalisms – secular vs Islamist, Bengali vs Muslim etc. That has probably been part of the expansionary impetus
- #5 The political goals of a basic ed system in this context are actually met by quite low levels of educational attainment. Kids can learn almost as much as needed to be effective citizens with a very limited experience of formal schooling – disciplines of time, officialdom, literacy etc Unlike with access, quality has always been a matter of weak winners and strong losers, and the quality agenda is more strongly owned by the donors than by the govt – more technocratic than political. Policymaking is not very influenced by civil soc, and teacher orgs have a kind of invisible power - they don’t have to put their stuff on the agenda, it is just there Critically – the outcomes are quite poor. A recent study by Asadullah found that it can take you to junrio secodnary to get to primary level. Time on task is a ciritical input problem: kids get between 20 and 50% of the international ave hours of learning per year. This is why private tuition is so vital.
- #6 Reform programmes are all supposed to be about quality education for all. But in practice the empahsis is on scale and that is ok to a signfiicant extent – system remains very under-resoruced. But teacher performance measures are all about training, pay, support, and not about getting them to show up on time and give good value for public money. Some accountability measures have been shelved under the PEDP3. But measures of student performance, the new students assessments, mkight make a difference although they are not at school level yet.
- #7 We looked at a pair each of low and high performing schools in N’ganj, an area with good edemand for schooling because its near industrial areas where basic education is needed for emplomynent. Looked closely at what made teachers most effective in those settings, clear that Professional rewards, including how hard it was to ‘reach and teach’ children, and the pleasures of exercising professional skill all mattered. Supervision from the local sub-district also mattered – by no means irrelevant/ headteacher can make teaching rewarding by leading by example Financial incentives did matter – what other things teachers do to stay solvent like private tuition matter to the effort they put in in the class. But so do unpaid pressures on time eg care work. Neglected fact – 60% of all teachers and more of Govt Pry school teachers are women, and women do average 6 hours of unpaid care work per day. So if they have no child or elderly care support, which they do not, it is unlikely that their unpaid care work burden will not intrudfe on their profressional life Accountability pressures – clever headteacher can hold teachers to account, informal and community pressures including on reputation do matter, as does local politics matter – for better and for worse
- #8 The PSA definitely helps us to explain why bangaldesh widened access without learning In conditions where policy is weakly programmatic and is not implemented through to frotnline need to develop hypotheses to explain the power of informal accountability For polciymakers it is worth reflecting on how class and gender biases may be hardwired into failing reforms – recognising that underserved populations may not respond like middle class people to education opportunities and that women teachers may have their own set of obstacles to high performance would open up a whole range of alternatives for reform