EDUCATION-BANGLADESH: Ambitious Goals, But Slow Progress

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Tabibul Islam

DHAKA, Mar 31 1998 (IPS) - Bangladesh is just two years away from a goal it set itself for universalising education, but progress is frustratingly slow despite the government’s unwavering commitment.

Some nine million children between six and 10 years are unlikely to ever enroll in schools, adding to the army of illiterates in a country where only 44 percent of the estimated 120 million people know how to read and write.

Quoting officials, the mass circulation daily ‘Ittefaq’ said recently that more than 1.8 million children in 16 northern districts under Rajshahi division were helping their parents in farming activities instead of going to school.

Some are employed as domestic help in the homes of the well- to-do farmers, while others eke out their living by doing farm work as daily wage earners, still others are involved in the smuggling along the border.

The influential ‘Daily Star’ newspaper in a report from Khulna division said hundreds of thousands of children there do not even bother to seek school admission, and of those who do, thousands drop out quickly enough because of poverty.

Problems of poverty, lack of opportunities, an uninspiring educational structure and the lack of initiative on the part of the community leaders are cited as the main impediments in bringing children to schools.

Poor families in Satkhira and Bagerhat districts prefer to send their children to the shrimp farms where they are paid one dollar a day, which is very good money for Bangladesh.

The shrimp farms which are thriving, have lured hundreds of boys and girls from the primary schools in the two districts. Officials in the Primary School Directorate say the rate of school enrollment in villages on the river — where the farms are located — in the districts have fallen sharply in recent times.

Officials are worried that the huge number of children remaining outside the primary school net could wreck the government’s ambitious plan to ensure education for all by the year 2000 and eradicate illiteracy by the year 2005.

The government wants to increase primary school enrollment to 95 percent, reduce the drop out rate by 30 percent and raise the adult literacy rate to 65 percent within the next two years. Both the formal and non-formal school systems have been mobilised, the latter targeted particularly at the thousands of child workers.

Some 350,000 working children in the six divisional headquarters of Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, Rajshahi, Sylhet and Barisal will be roped into the non-formal educational network, funded quite largely by foreign donors. Urban working children are chiefly found in restaurants, small industries and workshops, employing as domestic helpers and cleaners on trucks and buses.

A number of the non-formal primary schools are run by BRAC, one of the biggest non-governmental organisations that has been involved in community development for the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh for the last 26 years.

BRAC’s non-formal education programme, started in 1984, has been an outstanding success. Under the programme, some 30,000 schools have been established, which accommodate nearly one million students, 70 percent of whom are girls, while 95 percent of the teachers are women.

One half of the government’s 290-million dollar budget for education has been set aside for primary school education which is free. Additional resources pumped into the programme over the next four year will provide for more school teachers and books for students who are issued free educational material.

State Minister for Planning Dr. Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir has announced that 19,000 new primary schools would be established across Bangladesh in the next five years, to ensure every village has a school.

This, educationists say, would go a long way in ensuring girls also go to school in tradition-bound communities where women are expected to stay indoors and not mix with males. The government has raised the number of female school teachers by creating a quota of 60 percent of jobs for women teachers.

Another incentive for poor families has been the ‘Food for Education’ scheme introduced in a third of government-run primary schools since 1993. Children who attend 83 percent of classes are given 15 kgs of wheat free every month under the scheme. The maximum limit for each family is 30 kg.

“There appears to be no lacuna in the government’s plans for universalising education and eliminating illiteracy from

Bangladesh by the year 2005,” an educationist in Dhaka observed. But the problem of poverty continues to hamper progress, he said.

With at least half of the country’s population living below the poverty line, Bangladesh has a long way to go. “It will take considerable effort to accelerate the pace of development and reduce regional disparities in human development levels in Bangladesh,” the independent Human Development Report for 1997 states.

But the government has shown the political will to succeed with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed in charge of the important education portfolio.