Judging by every sign and symptom, Bangladesh is a transition economy. Unlike many developing and transitioning economies, it enjoys a very good demographic divide, with a young and energetic population to boot. However, many things depend on how we could make the best use of this young and vibrant population. The future thus lies in how we transform this large population into human capital. There’s no doubt that an optimum investment in educational development is the key here.
The best international practices tell us that a country has to spend 6% of its GDP, or 20% of its annual budget, on education. The Dakar declaration signed in 2000, where Bangladesh was also a signatory, endorsed this. Bangladesh has allocated little more than 2% of its GDP, or around 11% of its budget for education in the outgoing fiscal year.
Our best was 16% of the annual budget. Surprisingly, many poor countries in Africa allocate more for education than us. Reports tell us, countries like Tanzania have allocated 26% of its annual budget on education. The numbers are 24% for Lesotho, 22% for Burundi, 17% in Togo, and 16% in Uganda.
On the contrary, Bangladesh is much larger than these countries, as far as GDP is concerned. In fiscal year 2013, Bangladesh had a GDP size of $137bn, whereas Tanzania had a GDP size of $28.25bn, Uganda $21.2bn, Togo $3.68bn, Burundi $2.47bn, and Lesotho $2.61bn.
Despite a lower allocation, a large chunk of the education budget goes towards the non-developmental sector, or mainly for teachers’ salaries and wages. Budgetary allocation for education in the outgoing fiscal is Tk25,930 crore. Out of this, only Tk8,380 crore is spent for education development. The rest is spent on salaries and wages.
In fiscal 2013, the total allocation was Tk20,996 crore. The development sector only received Tk6,169 crore. Fiscal year 2012 saw an education budget of Tk18,736 crore. Only Tk4,275 crore was spent towards development. Thus the government budget for education was split between revenue and development. A large portion of the revenue budget (about 98% for primary, and 99% for secondary) is allocated to personnel costs, with the development budget primarily funding non-salary recurrent spending, including free textbooks for all children every year, and stipends to encourage children to attend school. These two alone account for more than 75% of expenditure at the primary level.
Though education has always been one of the highest priorities, these days the budget experiences a higher allocation in public administration, with an increasing number of public servants and the creation of senior posts. The defence budget is also growing year on year. Like many other transitioning economies in the world, or even South Asia, our government may think of reducing the allocation for these two sectors and increase the allocation for education.
Analysts say, reaching a target of 20% of the annual budget may be too ambitious as of now, but we could easily start with 14% from the next fiscal year and increase the number by 1% each year. Intervention from the private sector, or NGO support, can augment this effort manifold in areas where public sector allocation is meagre or not possible to reach the targeted segment. Public-private partnership to establish quality secondary and higher secondary schools and colleges, at least in the 64 districts and gradually 470 sub-districts, could generate fantastic results, and may very well be treated as impact investment.
The ongoing sixth five-year plan emphasised much on human resource development, and recommended 4% of the GDP allocation for education. However, never in the past years were we able to allocate more than 2.4% of the GDP towards education. For the past five years it was 2.2% of the GDP. We need to increase the allocation for education mainly for education development. In India it is 3.7%, in Nepal 3.8%, and in Pakistan 2.9%. The populist approach of covering more educational institutions or teachers under MPO, to utilise their “vote bank,” should be de-emphasised.
We should look for qualitative intervention for educational development. More allocation for MPhil or PhD programs could see a shift in quality for higher education like in many other competing countries. Efforts to reduce drop-out numbers for female students could also create miracles.
What we are teaching at the primary and tertiary levels should be revaluated. Curriculum development, teachers’ training, increasing the skill levels of science and mathematics teachers, developing an education administration or management cadre, and education research warrant much attention. We should look at teachers not as polling centre managers or presiding officers, but as the catalysts for developing our future generations.
While mainstreaming madrasa education or launching an all-inclusive or one-for-all education policy is of paramount importance, our budget should see serious efforts taken for reducing corruption in education. While it is easier said than done, we should find a way for the reduction in the politicisation of the rural education infrastructure and facilities.
While the government alone can’t take care of all investment in this sector, increased savings and lowered corruption can easily divert further investment in the hungry streams of the education sector, and thereby focus more on the enhancement of national capital.