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 1Project context 1Assumptions 2 II. DESCRIPTION OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN BANGLADESH 3Overall structure of education services 3

Pre-primary education 4Primary education 4Secondary education 5Tertiary education 5Literacy programmes 6Focus of the rest of this paper 6

General framework for policies, reforms and programme initiatives 6 III. ASSESSMENT OF EDUCATION SERVICES IN BANGLADESH 8Access to education 8

Enrolment rates 8Dropout rates 9Attendance 9Gender balance 9

Quality of education 10Barriers to accessing education 12Literacy rates 14Equity (the distribution of the benefits of the educational system) 15Summary of assessment of educational system in Bangladesh 17 IV. EDUCATION SERVICE DELIVERY IN THE CLP AREA 18Number of educational facilities 18Quality of education services 20

Infrastructure 20Student enrolment 20Teachers and attendance 21School management committees 21

Educational attainment 22Summary of educational services and attainment in the CLP area 23

V. SOME CONSIDERATIONS RELATING TO EDUCATIONAL SERVICES IN THE CHARS

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Early childhood development 24Status of early childhood development policy 24What is early childhood development? 24Why is early childhood development important? 25What is the evidence that early childhood development interventions make a difference?

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ECD as an integrated approach 27A concrete example 28The case for ECD on the chars 29

Improving access to and quality of education 30Summarizing the problem 30Options for fixing the current system 30

Does there exist a stick? 30Could a carrot work? 33Supplementing the formal education services 34

NGOs and education 35Higher performance of NGO schools 35The example of BRAC 36Lessons on quality education services from the NGOs 37

The private sector and education 38Prevalence of private schools 38Fees as deterrence 39

Recap on improving access to and quality of education 40Adult literacy 41

What do we mean by literacy? 41What is the impact of literacy interventions in development practice?

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What are important considerations in designing an adult literacy project?

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Literacy interventions and CLP 44 VI. RECOMMENDATIONS AND NEXT STEPS 45

Recommendations 45What might these components look like? 45Next 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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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* 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

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Secondary (IX to X) 6,620,845Higher secondary (XI to XII)

952,850

Dakhil madrassa (VI to X) 864,717Alim 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.

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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.

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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>.

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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/bangladesh_scenario.htm>. 14 JBIC (2002), p.44.

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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>.

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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 Education Watch 2005, p.8. 20 Education Watch 2002, p.2.

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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.

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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 World Bank (2006), p.11. 26 Education Watch 2001, pp. 5-6.

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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.

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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 Education Watch 2002, p.4. 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 Education Watch 2002, p.4. 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.

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• 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.

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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

Tota

l Num

ber

of V

illage

s

Gov

ernm

ent

Prim

ary

Sch

ools

NG

O P

rimar

y S

choo

ls

Juni

or/H

igh

Sch

ool

Col

lege

Pro

fess

iona

l In

stitu

tion

Mad

rash

a (E

bted

ia)

Mad

rash

a (D

akil)

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).

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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:

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• 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;

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• 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 PercentageNo 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.

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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%

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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;

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• 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.

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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.

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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

The benefits actually accrue more to the disadvantag

• The ICDS in India (cited above) demonstratedhardly affected the dropout rates of the richer cout rates of the poorest children by 46 percent

• Research on child nutrition in the Philippines sattendance of 1.1 to 2.1 academic years for thchildren, but only slightly higher effects for bett

ECD as an integrated approach. The importance of adevelopment as a whole, and not just focusing on acais important. Taking an integrated and broader view, health and nutrition, as well as parenting skills and suthe ECD approach. Thus, in terms of nutrition:

• A significant improvement in the nutritional staautomatically improve psycho-social developm

• Implementing interventions in health, nutrition,together can have a greater effect than any intstudy in Jamaica, for example, showed how eisupplementary feeding can increase cognitive

55 World Bank (2006), p.12. 56 UNESCO (2001), p.9.

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.

ed: that ECD involvement hildren but reduced drop-

; howed increases in school e most malnourished er-nourished children.

ddressing childhood demic pre-school activities,

incorporating attention to pports, is a critical aspect of

tus of children does not ent;56 and mental stimulation ervention applied alone. A ther cognitive stimulation or abilities of a malnourished

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.

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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>

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• 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 World Bank (2004), p.2.

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• 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.

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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>.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 Education Watch 2002, p.5. 82 JBIC (2002), p.82. 83 This sub-section relies heavily on BRAC (2003c) and Watkins (2002).

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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.

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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).

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These budget private schools are usually established by entrepreneurs from within the poor communities themselves, employing teachers from those communities – unlike in government schools, where teachers are often brought in from outside. The private schools charge very low fees, affordable to parents on poverty-line and minimum-wages.89

Further, this study assessed the quality of the schools, looking at such factors as teacher attendance and student core curriculum competency, and found that the private schools outperformed their corresponding national public primary schools. Fees as deterrence. One has to ask, however, whether there is not a bottom-floor beyond which very poor households are not deterred by cost in accessing education. Earlier in this report it was reported that the average household payment for primary education in Bangladesh over the nine-month school year in 2000 was 736 Tk., with the amount being 2181 Tk. in urban areas and 524 in rural areas. This suggests a discrepancy in the ability to pay between urban and rural areas. This ability to pay in further aggravated by other costs beyond fees, such as:

• Opportunity costs (children attending school contribute less to carrying out household chores, labour which otherwise frees up their mothers to engage in productive work – for example, girls in Bangladesh start assuming responsibility for collecting firewood, fetching water and taking care of siblings at the age of five);

• Child labour (actual productive labour that children may engage in), which results in direct (wages) or indirect (sellable product) monetary gain for the household;

• Lost time due to travelling (the more travel time involving in going to and fro school means more time lost that could be used in performing chores or work).90

These costs are particularly onerous for poorer households, who are at the margin in terms of income. It is not unreasonable to assume that the greater the costs, both indirect (such as forgone help with chores) and direct (fees for schools or lost children’s wages), the greater the disincentive to permit school attendance for children of poor households. Indeed, it is noteworthy that in countries where school fees were abolished, primary enrolment rates soared:

• In Malawi, when school fees were abolished in 1994, enrolments increased 51%;

• In Uganda, when fees were dissolved in 1996, enrolments increased 70%; • In Tanzania, with fees gone in 2001, the enrolment rate increased from

57% to 85%;

89 Ibid. 90 Watkins (2000), pp.190-3.

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• In Kenya, with fees eliminated, 1.2 million students joined the school system.91

Conversely, when school fees were increased in Zimbabwe, Ghana and Côte D’Ivoire (under structural adjustment programmes in the 1990s), school dropout rates increased and enrolment rates dropped. Household surveys identified inability to pay as the primary reason.92

A Bangladeshi example93 provides another illustration of the ability to pay issue. Some years ago, the government created community schools, which were lower-cost buildings (with a minimum of two classrooms) that were located in communities that lacked schools, where the literacy rate was high, where the population density was high, and where a large number of children (especially girls) did not attend school. The local communities were expected to contribute in various ways to the building and operating of these schools. For various reasons, a number of these schools became non-functional and, seeking a solution, the government offered to turn these schools over to NGOs to operate. BRAC assumed the operation of a number of these schools. The government provided textbooks free of cost, but BRAC had to institute a small fee for materials. The incentive for NGOs in taking on these schools was that if they became operational and successful, the government would, after two years, start providing for the teachers’ salaries. BRAC undertook a study when it realized that some 15% of the total fee amount was not being collected. It turned out that some 75% of students paid the fee irregularly, and that the degree to which a household paid the fee was directly related to their economic status. For those that were irregular fee payers, 49% cited poverty as the reason for their inability to pay. In the survey, households maintained that they wished to pay, pointing to free government primary schools as an example of the poor quality that results from no fees being charged. However, despite their willingness to pay, they simply were unable to pay at times. Recap on improving access to and quality of education Improvements to the delivery of primary school education could therefore 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 appropriate monitoring information;

91 World Bank (2004a), p.8. 92 Watkins (2000), pp.183. 93 All the information for this illustration comes from BRAC (2003b).

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• 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 could 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.

The option of the delivery of alternative education via the private sector raises the serious concern that fees would pose an insurmountable barrier to the very poor. There are, of course, mechanisms for getting around such a difficulty, notably vouchers for poor households. Educational grant programmes for the poor in Bangladesh have, however, suffered from not reaching their intended beneficiaries. As well, alternative schooling has been well-delivered by NGOs in Bangladesh, so that in practice it would seem to make more sense to fund NGOs directly to deliver schooling than to create a “market” for private schools by using imperfect voucher programmes. Nevertheless, for the sake of including the range of options, the potential for private schools should be included:

• Supporting alternative schools administered by the private sector, but where vouchers would need to be provided to poor households.

Adult literacy What do we mean by literacy? One cannot assume the dictionary definition for literacy when talking about the concept in the context of international development. What literacy is and how it should be achieved has been the subject of debate and evolution over the decades of development practice. This is not, however, a mere esoteric or academic debate – what one seeks to accomplish in advancing literacy and how one goes about doing it has been greatly influenced by the evolving thinking about literacy. Literacy can be described in terms of three components:94

• Literacy as a set of discrete skills – this is the everyday meaning attached to literacy, the ability to read and to write, more typically including numeracy as well, and even other forms of accessing knowledge, such as visual literacy or media literacy; this essential sense of literacy was the initial understanding of literacy as a development goal, as expressed in international declarations claiming literacy as a fundamental human right;

• Literacy as an applied skill – rather than view literacy as a technical, stand-alone skill, literacy should be viewed in context, notably, how can it

94 The following description of literacy relies heavily on UNESCO (2005), pp.148-155.

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aid development, in what ways and for what purposes do beneficiaries seek to acquire literacy; this approach puts greater emphasis on “functional” literacy, acquiring the essentials of literacy as appropriate to the circumstances (literacy as part of human capital development was a common theme in the 1960s and 70s);

• Literacy as a transformative learning process – this approach emphasizes the concrete context of learning, namely the individual’s experiences, where learning is based on critical refection, whose purpose is to empower and to support the individual in challenging and changing his or her circumstances (this view is best exemplified by Paolo Freire and the REFLECT movement).

These perspectives are practically relevant because they speak to the following issues:

• What are we trying to teach when promoting literacy? • What is the role of the adult students and their circumstances in designing

literacy programmes? What is the impact of literacy interventions in development practice? The case for the benefits of literacy is more often assumed than proven. There are several reasons for this lack of extensive evidence:95

• Most research has not separated the benefits of literacy per se from those of attending school or participating in adult literacy programmes;

• Little research has been devoted to adult literacy programmes; • Many of the evaluations have been inadequate and unreliable, tracking

inputs and outputs and not outcomes; • Research has focused on the impact of literacy upon the individual rather

than the impact at the family/household, community or national level; • Literacy is not defined consistently across studies and literacy data are

frequently flawed. Overall, the following advantages of literacy are apparent:96

• Literacy (and education) are generally tied to economic growth (though there may be a threshold level of both literacy and/or economic development for the impact to be significant);

• Literacy has the potential for contributing to several other development goals because it increases access to many types of information relevant to improving a person’s livelihood;97

• Adult literacy increases the likelihood of and achievement in schooling by their children;

• Literacy has a positive effect on health knowledge and good health practices;

95 Ibid., p.138; also DFID (2001), p.9. 96 Ibid., pp.138-44. 97 DFID (2001), p.5.

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• Greater enrolment in education reduces the fertility rate, although there is little research on the impact of adult literacy programmes on fertility;

• Education and literacy increases political participation and civic engagement;

• Literacy has considerable human benefits – contributing to increased self-esteem, empowerment and creativity.

What are important considerations in designing an adult literacy project? If literacy has several possible impacts, then it is necessary to make some choices regarding the purpose of the literacy intervention. This involves engaging the potential beneficiaries in clarifying the purpose of the literacy project, as well as having regard to the needs and circumstances of the adult participants. AS well, issues of quality and delivery are critical. These considerations end up being expressed in several ways:

• The literacy curriculum: This will depend on the learners’ needs and interests, having regard for the demand and motivation for literacy; “fundamentally, the curriculum must be useful and relevant to learners’ everyday lives. A relevant curriculum is conducive to better learning outcomes;”98

o “The needs of the learners from poverty settings are such that they can be effectively addressed only when the learners are made to ‘own’ the programmes and actively participate in their own learning. But such participation cannot be procured unless their learning and living needs are integrated both in materials and in actual transaction. The challenge in organising learning sequences around actual life concerns of the poor can only be met when there is a shared perception of the core purposes of the programme and the learning materials among the learners, the facilitators and the community;”99

o “A wide body of evidence indicates that people’s individual literacy and communication needs and aspirations are closely bound up with their livelihood opportunities and strategies. Many people wish to be able to engage better with savings and credit schemes, enhance their agricultural practices, or gain better access to markets. Literacy tasks should be contextualised within people’s daily lives and aspirations. Accordingly, the body of research and evaluation of literacy work in recent years has shown that literacy initiatives generally work far better when integrated into other development activities. In other words, as a means to an end, rather than as an end in itself;”100

• Teaching adults is different from teaching children:101

98 UNESCO (2005), p.219; see also DFID (2001), pp.6-8. 99 ACCU (1998), p.4. This document provides a number of useful suggestions for conducting needs assessments in advance of designing literacy programmes for the poor. 100 DFID (2002), p.6. 101 UNESCO (2005), p.221.

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o Adults need to know why they should learn something before they undertake to learn it; Adults conceive of themselves as responsible for their lives and need to be treated by others as such;

o Adults come to educational activity with a range of life experiences; o Adults are ready to learn how to cope with real-life situations

effectively; o Adults are task-or problem-centred (unlike children in school, who

are subject-oriented): o Adults respond to extrinsic motivation (e.g. better jobs, promotions

and salary increases) but even more to intrinsic motivation (e.g. increased self-esteem, quality of life, responsibility and job satisfaction);

• Organizing the learning groups: Adult are largely voluntary participants and will stop attending if they feel the programme is not meeting their needs; this means:

o Constantly monitoring the effectiveness and usefulness of the programme;

o Making sure the location, timing, regularity, intensity and duration of the programme matches the expectations of participants;

o Where relevant, being mindful of gender issues (whether women and men can mix or need to be taught separately);

• Literacy educators: “Those who facilitate learning classes and groups are vital to the success of adult literacy programmes. [But] receive little (if any) regular remuneration, lack job security, and receive few training opportunities and little ongoing professional support; if a literacy programme is to be successful, it must pay particular attention to teacher selection, supervision, training, remuneration and on-going professional development;”102

• Literacy as a continuous process: The acquisition of literacy is a process, not a single obvious point when a person passes from illiteracy to literacy. As such, to be sustainable, an individual needs opportunities to regularly practice the acquired knowledge; thus, ensuring that what is learned is very practically linked to the individual’s everyday experiences makes the learning sustainable (which is why the initial needs assessment and programme planning is so important); as well, opportunities to build on those skills, through community learning centres that provide reading materials, are another way to ensure that individuals do not relapse back into illiteracy.103

At a more practical level, these translate into action in the following ways:104

102 Ibid., p.224. 103 ActionAid (2005), p.3; ACCU (1998a). The ACCU has a very extensive series of studies on learning resource centres. See <http://www.accu.or.jp/litdbase/pub/main4.htm>. 104 ActionAid (2005), UNESCO (2005).

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• It is important to invest in on-going feedback and evaluation mechanisms, to test the practical use of what has been learnt, as well as other impacts (for example, health and livelihoods);

• To attract and retain effective literacy educators, they should be paid no less than the minimum wage of a primary school teacher;

• Ideally, literacy educators should be local individuals who receive significant initial training, refresher training and on-going supervision;

• The ratio of learners-to-educators should not be more than 30-1, and of learning groups-t0-supervisors not more than 15-1 (and 10-1 in remote areas), to allow for a minimum of one visit per month;

• A target amount of teaching for an adult literacy programme should be a approximately 300-400 hours, perhaps even as high as 600 hours; this would involve some 2-3 sessions a week, each session lasting 2 hours;

• A good quality programme that reflects these benchmarks can be expected to cost US$50 to $US100 per learner per year for three years.

Literacy interventions and CLP. As noted at the outset, the Chars Livelihood Programme does anticipate supporting some illiterate adults to acquire minimal literacy skills. To date the proposed vehicle for doing so is through Social Development activity of the project. The Social Development section is undertaking, for example, functional education courses for its groups, with the proposed topics being:

• Group Strength, Leadership and Planning; • Livelihood Choices and Crisis Management; • Civil Rights for Char Communities; • Family Law and its Application (dowry, marriage age, desertion, divorce,

others); • Water, Sanitation and Hygiene; • Disaster Planning, Management and Preparedness (flood, drought, cold

weather). The assignment for this paper did not include examining the existing operational mechanisms and assessing their suitability for the education activities being proposed, but clearly the Social Development stream is one obvious means for delivering adult literacy programming. Because adult literacy relies on group processes, another possibility is the voluntary savings and loans associations (VSLA) pilot project being implemented through CLP. These associations are a form of micro-financing, promoting small group savings, relying on group cohesion. Thus they also offer a ready-made audience, one that may wish to focus their literary learning goals around income-earning skills. Indeed, literacy has been an intimate and successful component of the VSLA approach, and so this would appear to be another natural venue for

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such programming.105 There is no reason why CLP could not deliver literacy programmes through more than one mechanism. VI. RECOMMENDATIONS AND NEXT STEPS Recommendations. This paper has provided a review of the state of educational services in Bangladesh and, in that context, has identified relevant and realistic opportunities where the Chars Livelihood Programme could promote useful interventions that would enhance educational attainment for the project’s target population, focusing on:

• Early childhood development; • Primary education; and • Adult literacy.

On the basis of this policy and programme level analysis, but subject to further research (as discussed below), it is proposed that possible project initiatives could involve the following:

• 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).

What might these components look like? More work would need to be done fleshing out the content of these components, but for starters they would involve the following:

• Early childhood development: Delivered through a multi-purpose community centre (the UNICEF para centres offer an attractive model), offering early childhood stimulation and learning, parenting skills, public health information, and some basic family health and nutrition services;

• Strengthening school accountability through school management committees: Focusing on:

105 Odell (2004).

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o Teacher recruitment and training (including initial training, on-going in-service direction and refresher training);

o Clear performance standards (teacher attendance, adhering to lesson plans, student discipline and attendance, timely delivery of text books, and so on);

o Supervision and accountability (through monitoring of performance standards and checks on teacher performance by school management committees and through teacher communication with parents);

o Removal of barriers (ensuring that households do not incur any extra costs, that is, no need for tutors, no illegal fees, proper targeting and full receipt of stipends on the part of poor households);

This would require engagement with and support from the Government of Bangladesh; the option of an incentive fund would require establishing the amount of the incentive (presumably a monthly payment to teachers);

• Para-teachers: Recruitment of candidates from the local community possessing a minimum level of education (presumably grade VIII or X), receiving initial training and on-going supervision, support and continuing training;

• Adult literacy: Establishment of groups, selection and preparation of literacy educators, development of curriculum, delivery of curriculum, and on-going monitoring and evaluation.

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. The fact that the project area encompasses so many villages that already will be monitored and whose broader socio-economic outcomes will be tracked provides effective comparison groups for these interventions. Such an approach would, for example, allow for an evaluation of strengthening school management committees versus the same intervention plus an incentive fund. Or it could compare the impact of early childhood development programmes, with and without accompanying adult literacy programming. Next steps. 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

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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.

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