Printer-friendly VersionEmail to a Friend

A Surprise MDG Success Story

More girls are in school in Bangladesh but challenges remain

STRUGGLING TO IMPROVE A study by the Campaign for Popular Education in Bangladesh shows girls are performing 11% worse than boys. Poor girls cannot afford private tutoring, which is usually necessary to score well on exams.
Photo by AFP

When the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were formulated nearly a decade ago, Bangladesh had few advantages in the struggle to reach the targets that would lift its people out of poverty. In the area of secondary education, to the surprise of many, the country exceeded expectations.

Bangladesh has been described as in the “vanguard” globally in how it has achieved a tremendous jump in girls’ presence in the classroom. The number of girls being educated has nearly quadrupled, from 1.1 million in 1991 to more than 4 million in 2008.

The achievement included a threefold increase in secondary enrollments and a sevenfold increase in female enrollments since 1980. This was attributed in part to awareness campaigns of nongovernment organizations (NGOs), conducted with women’s groups during weekly village meetings, which were designed to change parents’ attitudes. Also credited is private-sector assistance for salaries, training, and incentives, such as a femaletargeted stipend program launched in the early 1990s.

“Bangladesh has made impressive achievements in girls’ education and is now making good progress in recruiting 60% female teachers in government primary schools,” notes Brajesh Panth, Principal Social Sector Specialist with the Asian Development Bank’s South Asia Department.

Although there are regional variations, much of the overall gain has enabled Bangladesh to achieve one of its MDGs ahead of time—that of gender parity in education.

The share of females in total enrollment is now close to 55%, compared with less than 40% in the early 1990s. According to World Bank reports, the female secondary school assistance stipend program is “ground-breaking” and is globally recognized as “pioneering” for how it has broken down a huge barrier to girls’ access to education and kept many more in school until graduation.

The stipend program began as a local NGO’s experiment in one subdistrict in 1982 (with funding from the United States Government) and slowly expanded. The Norwegian Government’s development agency, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), took over the program in 1992 and, 2 years later, with funding from the Asian Development Bank and the World Bank, Bangladesh’s Ministry of Education provided a stipend to each girl from a family living below the poverty line who enrolled in grades 6 through 10 throughout the country.

A book allowance was included for girls in grade 9, and extra funds to cover tutoring for the final exam were given to girls in grade 10. The government recently extended stipends to girls entering grades 11 and 12. Each girl receives the stipend assistance through a bank account established in her name.

According to the World Bank, female enrollment increased from 33% of the total enrollment in 1991 to 60% in 1998, while overall gross enrollment also doubled from 27% in 1992 to 56% in 1998. The secondary school certificate pass rate for girls receiving the stipend also increased from 39% in 2001 to nearly 63% in 2008, as well as among girls not getting the stipend, from 37% to nearly 55%, reports a 2008 World Bank assessment.

The increase was partly due to the assistance given to teachers and education officers under the program, through funding for salaries of additional teachers, particularly females. Funding was also provided for project personnel and subdistrict education officers, as well as training of school supervisors on school management.

Receiving the stipend was dependent on each girl attaining a 45% pass mark, keeping an attendance rate of 75% and staying unmarried until she graduated. To ensure that only eligible girls received the stipend, three additional criteria were added in 2003: new entry to the program was limited to students in grades 6 to 9, girls studying in grade 10 (previous program members) had to be registered with the government, and the 45% pass mark applied to halfterm exams also.

While recognizing the “significant impact” of the stipend program, Enamul Hoque, a research manager with the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), a coalition of 1,000 NGOs working in literacy and education, also says girls are still dropping out at a high rate and are still behind boys in terms of graduating from secondary school. On the secondary school exams, according to a study by CAMPE’s Education Watch, which produces an annual report on educationrelated issues in Bangladesh, girls are performing some 11% behind the boys. Poor girls cannot afford the private tutoring that is generally needed to do well on exams because “the quality of education is not up to the mark,” explains Mr. Hoque. Thus they don’t score well.

Mr. Hoque says 50% of girls are dropping out before the grade 10 final exam primarily because of their performance, though to a lesser degree parents’ concerns for their daughter’s security is a factor.

Mr. Hoque believes the successful stipend program should remain untied to academic performance for the longer-term impact. “If we can retain a girl in school through the second level, definitely her children will go to school” and, he adds, she will be able to give them the tutoring help they will need, at least in the primary years.

Because the demand for education is greater than the space, schools in Bangladesh largely operate in two shifts, allowing each primary-aged child only up to 3 hours in a classroom. •