Bangladesh has made great strides in expanding schooling access over the last two decades. It invested heavily in education to achieve the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education for all children by 2015. These investments have paid off: The net primary enrolment rate in the country is close to the rates of countries in East Asia. The number of out-of-school children in the country has declined significantly since the turn of the millennium and is now less than 5 million. Equally impressive, the country has substantially narrowed the gender gap in primary and secondary school enrolment. Today, there are more girls than boys in both primary and secondary school.
But just spending time in school is not enough. To reap the full benefits of investing in education, students need to learn skills that the labour market is looking for. And here, the evidence reveals the need for reform. The Government’s National Student Assessment (NSA) shows that only one out of three fifth-grade students have grade V competencies.
Another survey conducted by the World Bank shows that in the rural areas, only 80-90% of students attain basic grade V competencies in oral and written mathematics even after completing grade IX. The large expansion of schooling over the past two decades has meant a large influx into schools of children who are first-generation school-goers and who face significant learning disadvantages, which may be reflected in the lower competencies overall.
Much of what Bangladeshi students are taught is procedural or rote-based. Students are poorly-prepared in practical competencies such as measurement, problem-solving, and the writing of meaningful and grammatically-correct sentences. The study of science in the school system is oriented toward learning large volumes of scientific information and less toward cultivating intellectual curiosity.
The good news is that the government is now putting quality at the top of the agenda in its new education strategy. If Bangladesh wants to harness the full potential of its labour force for economic growth, it will need to focus squarely on learning outcomes. A recent World Bank report, “Student Learning in South Asia: Challenges, Opportunities and Policy Priorities,” recommends a multi-pronged strategy for improving education quality that includes initiatives within and outside the education sector.
The first priority is to focus explicitly on measuring student achievement and progress. The state of student learning assessments needs to be strengthened significantly. The government is now investing in assessing student learning outcomes. This needs to happen regularly, consistently, and rigorously, and in benchmarking national learning outcomes against international standards.
Participating in international assessments will provide the education system the cutting-edge competencies needed to be globally competitive and make education more application-oriented and relevant. It will also provide a strong impetus and direction for reform programs in the education sector.
The second priority is to ensure that young children get enough nutrition. Bangladesh has one of the world’s highest rates of childhood malnutrition, and this has a damaging effect on children’s ability to learn.
Evidence worldwide, from both developing and developed countries shows that investing in early-life nutrition, with appropriate coverage and age targeting, is critical to offset life-long learning disadvantages, and can be a highly cost-effective investment in the quality and efficiency of education.
Third, improving teacher quality is essential to improving education quality. Several studies show that teachers perform poorly in math and language tests based on the curriculum they are supposed to teach. Higher and clear standards must be enforced, along with providing support to teachers to improve their quality. Merit-based recruitment policies need to be enforced along with measures to enhance teacher accountability and address the problem of teacher absenteeism. Such policies have proved to be successful in raising teacher quality in East Asia, with a positive impact on student learning.
Fourth, the government needs to use financial incentives to boost education quality. In the past, when extra resources were available for education, they were spent on reducing class sizes, and improving infrastructure. These have some merit but the evidence suggests they have not always resulted in student learning improvements. A better use of the resources would be to link them to need and student performance (for example, performance pay for teachers, which is being implemented in Brazil).
Fifth and finally, the government cannot possibly afford to improve educational quality by itself. It needs to partner with the private sector, including non-governmental organisations, in this effort. The private and non-government sector is already playing a major role in Bangladeshi education, and the government should encourage greater private-sector participation by easing entry barriers and encouraging well-designed public-private partnerships in education.
Bangladesh has achieved great success in increasing school enrolment. And the majority of the above-mentioned recommendations are already being initiated in Bangladesh. Today’s challenge is to give every Bangladeshi child the quality education he or she deserves. I am confident that Bangladesh will be successful in addressing this challenge too.