Ten-year-old boy, Ibrahim Hossain, was seen hanging from the door of an overcrowded human hauler at Farmgate bus stop yesterday as he was collecting fares from passengers.
Ibrahim works as a helper at a human hauler that runs on the Farmgate-Mirpur route. He works from 6am to 10pm and earns Tk400 a day.
The boy said that he left school while reading in class III as it was not possible for his rickshaw-puller father to maintain a seven-member family. “I had no option but to leave school as I needed to help my family,” he said.
Like Ibrahim, a large number of children are still out of school despite government’s efforts to bring every child to school.
A recent World Bank report said that as many as five million children are still out of school in Bangladesh.
These children are out of school either because they did not enrol in school or dropped out very early, mostly due to poverty, said the report titled “Seeding Fertile Ground: Education That Works for Bangladesh” released early this month.
The report said it is very difficult to bring these children to school and retain them until the completion of primary cycle.
Geographically, children in the Sylhet, Dhaka, and Chittagong divisions have a higher risk of being out of school, it added.
Campaign for Popular Education Executive Director Rasheda K Chowdhury told the Dhaka Tribune that it is difficult to bring three categories of children to schools. These are children with disabilities, children living in remote rural areas and children living in urban slums.
She said that the environment of most schools is not congenial to children with disabilities and enrolment among them is very low.
According to the report, parents’ education and household income are two of the most significant risk factors for children being out of school.
It said that 12% of the poorest children are more likely to be out of school and they have a little chance of ever-enrolling in or completing grade 1 compared to the richest 20% children.
Having a mother with the background of more than a secondary education reduces the chance of being out of school by about 8% compared to having a mother with no education after taking into account other risk factors, according to the report.
Rasheda K Chowdhury said that special education programme was needed to bring these children to school.
“The enrolment rate in primary level has increased significantly in recent years. Bringing the rest of children to school is a difficult task and special programme is needed for it. It can be an informal or formal education approach,” she said.
Director General of the Directorate of Primary Education Shyamal Kanti Ghosh told the Dhaka Tribune that the DPE has recently taken some steps to bring all children to school and retain them.
“We are carrying out school feeding programmes and stipend programmes to increase enrolment and reduce dropout rate,” he said.