The sixth Education Watch report is the first one on the state of secondary education in Bangladesh. Its aim is to construct a baseline of basic indicators on how the sub-sector functions, especially in respect of provisions for services and their internal efficiency. In keeping with the objectives and practice for Education Watch studies, the aim also is to contribute to informed dialogue on policy and actions and to facilitate, for this purpose, civil society participation in the development of education policies and strategies.

Data for this study were drawn from two sources – a household survey and a survey of secondary level institutions. The household survey addressed objective 1 above and most of objective 4. The institution survey covered objectives 2, 3 , part of 4 and 5.

The sampling strategy adopted for Education Watch 1999 and 2001 was followed in this study with minor modifications. Current enrolment status of the children aged 11-15 years (because this is the official age range for secondary education) was the key variable in determining sample size for the household survey.

Because of known variations in the educational attainment among geographical regions in the country, sampling design provided for separate estimates for the following eight strata:

• Rural Bangladesh: Rural Dhaka division

• Rural Chittagong division

• Rural Rajshahi division

• Rural Khulna division

• Rural Barisal division

• Rural Sylhet division

• Urban Bangladesh: Metropolitan cities

• Municipalities
  

A four-stage sampling procedure was adopted for each stratum. At the first stage, in each rural stratum 30 upazilas and in each urban stratum 30 thanas/municipalities were selected through systematic sampling technique with probability proportionate to size (PPS) of population. At the second stage, one union (ward for urban strata) for each selected upazila/thana/municipality was selected through simple random sampling. At the third stage, four villages (mahallah for urban strata) were randomly selected from each of the selected union/ward. This means that 120 (30x4) villages/mahallahs were selected for each stratum, totalling 960 (120x8) for the whole of Bangladesh. It turned out that all 64 districts of the country were represented in the sample.

The household survey was carried out in 25 households in each of the selected village/mahallah. This number was fixed on the basis of the experience of household surveys done for the first and the third Education Watch. It was calculated that the survey of such a number of households in each village could produce required numbers of children aged 11-15 for valid estimates at the stratum level. 

This study was limited to six types of schools: junior secondary school, government school, non-government school, combined school and college, dakhil madrasa, and alim madrasa. The non-government school and the dakhil madrasa were the most numerous and served 87 percent of the secondary level students. For these two categories, 30 institutions were selected randomly for each stratum; which resulted in a sample of 240 non-government schools and 240 dakhil madrassas. For the other four categories, 30 institutions were selected randomly from each type, totalling 120. Thus, a total of 600 secondary level educational institutions were included in the sample of institutions for this study. 

A total of 23,971 households from 1,088 villages/mahallahs was covered under the household survey. The total population in these households were 122,006 with a sex ratio 101.2¹. Of them 14,663 were aged 11-15 years old and 9,316 were secondary school students. Information from 9,556 teachers and 6,162 managing committee/board members was also collected during the school survey. Tables 1 and 2 provide the sampling details.

Table 1. Sample for the household survey

Table 2. Sample for the educational institution survey

Note: There is no provision of school managing committee (SMC) in the 
government secondary schools

¹ Sex ratio is the number of males against each 100 females.

This study documents how expansion of the system has aggravated quality problems. High rates of dropout and failure in public examinations indicate serious deficiencies in quality of education. Dropout rates averaged over 50 percent between grades 6 to 10 in recent years. On an average, half of the candidates, even after they survived the gauntlet from class six to ten and the “test” examination in class ten, passed the SSC examination.

Poor achievement of students and low quality in secondary education can be attributed to well-known causes, as shown in this study – deficiencies in teachers’ skills and capability, inadequate facilities and learning materials, poor enforcement of rules and criteria for approval of government subvention, inadequate resources reflected in low per student expenditure, and poor governance and management of schools. 

Attention to poverty reduction, emphasized in the national Poverty Reduction Strategy, has brought out in sharp relief the high degree of inequity in respect of access and participation in education. Maintaining acceptable quality in education is a simultaneous concern, since access to education without the guarantee of a minimum level of quality is meaningless.

The global market has touched the lives of people in the remotest village and has created a demand for new skills and knowledge. Meeting this demand has to be a key issue in defining educational priorities, content and quality at both primary and secondary stages.

Development initiatives and an education sector reforms programme supported with international assistance have been aimed at addressing the problems of quality and equitable opportunities in secondary education. The success of these initiatives will depend on understanding the dimensions and depths of the problems and designing actions that are realistic, implementable and responsive to specific needs and circumstances. The findings of this study, summarized below, are intended as a contribution to this end. 

• A steady growth in secondary education participation has been achieved in the last decade which has reached 45 percent on a net basis for the 11-15 year age children – from 33 percent in 1998. 
• Enrollment of girls has surged ahead of boys by 11 percentage points at 50.6 percent compared to 39.6 percent for boys on a net basis. This has been a broad- based progress across geographical areas and socio-economic strata.
• There remains a large urban-rural gap of 10 percentage points – at 43.6 percent net enrolment in rural areas and 54.0 percent in urban areas. Slums in large urban cities fare the worst with only 18 percent net enrolment.
• Of those enrolled in secondary level, over three quarters went to non-government secondary schools. The next most popular category is the madrasa, with 14 percent of enrolment in government-assisted madrasas and another two percent in “non-graded” quomi madrasas.
• Economic status and parental education are most closely correlated with education participation. Children of households with “surplus” food availability have more than double the chance of being in school than children in “deficit” households. Three quarters of children of mothers with secondary education are in secondary school compared with 31 percent for mothers with no formal education.
• On reasons for non-participation, two responses stand out – “scarcity of money” or poverty, and children’s “dislike of school”, which indicates problems in respect of classroom practices. The third most frequent response was the need for the child to work, which is linked to poverty. Poverty appears to be the predominant cause of non-participation in secondary education. This probably is one explanation of the popularity of madrasas, some of which offer room and board to students and charge less fee than general secondary schools.

Learning provisions and facilities

• Non-government secondary schools and dakhil madrsas are the most numerous providers of secondary education serving respectively 76 per cent and 11 percent of all secondary level students. Including alim madrasas and “non-graded” madrasas, the religion-based institutions enrolls 16 percent of secondary level students. 
• About a half of the schools had science laboratories of varying quality; 30 percent of the non-government schools had adequate laboratories; 87 percent of the madrasas did not have any. 
• Only 15 percent of the institutions had a library with a collection of books that could be regarded as adequate judged by modest standards.
• Thirty-seven percent of the schools claimed to have computer education facility, but a fifth of the schools had only one computer and another fifth had 2-15 computers; the rest had none. Fifty-four percent reported having at least one teacher with training in computer use.
• Half of the secondary education institutions were found to have physical facilities (roofs, walls, floors, doors, and windows) in good or largely good condition, one third were in poor condition and 18 percent were in damaged or seriously dilapidated condition.
• Nearly 60 percent institutions had electricity connections, but two-thirds of classrooms and half of teachers’ rooms had no electricity.
• Most schools have clean water supply and toilets; three quarters with separate facilities for boys and girls; but a quarter of the toilets were in seriously unhygienic condition.
• Less than a fifth of the secondary teachers (17.9 percent) were women. Eighty-four percent of the teachers received government salary subvention.
• Low level of academic achievement of teachers was widespread. Eighty-four percent of secondary teachers had a bachelors or higher degrees; however, 57 percent of the teachers claiming the Bachelors degree were placed in the third division or some even did not take the degree examination. The same was the situation with 78 percent of those who claimed Masters’ qualifications.
• Nearly half of the graduate teachers studied humanities; 20 percent studied science and 23 percent were madrasa graduates. More than half of the secondary teachers had no professional pedagogic training.
• The nominal student-teacher ratio was 29; however, with shortage of teachers for key subjects and absences of (10 percent on an average day), effective student teacher ratio was substantially higher. This was offset by student attendance rate of only 50 percent.
  

Internal efficiency of institutions

• Of children enrolled in class six, about half reached class ten, 40 percent passed the test prior to public examinations (SSC/dakhil) and only 20 percent passed the public examinations and thus successfully completed the secondary cycle. 
• In contrast to advances in initial enrollment, girls lagged behind boys by 6 percentage points in reaching class ten, by 17 percentage points in passing the class ten “test” and by 11 percentage points in passing the public examination on average between 2001 and 2004. Boys were ahead of girls in completing the cycle and passing secondary examinations in all types of secondary institutions.
• On average 19.6 pupil years were required to produce one completer of the five year cycle. The investment of 25.1 years pupil years was needed to have a girl complete the cycle. This testified to serious inefficiency of the system and was an indication of serious quality problems.
  

Financing and resources

• Private household spending for secondary education was more than four times higher than public spending. On an average, Taka 8,874 per male child and Taka 7, 411 per girl child were spent annually by households for children’s secondary education. By comparison, public spending per child per year was in the order of Taka 1500 in non-government secondary schools and Taka 1900 in dakhil madrasas.
• Household expenditure in urban areas were 71 percent higher for boys and 80 percent more for girls.
• Expenditures for private tutoring were the highest among all items of private expenditures across the board, accounting for about half of the total private spending.
• The poor in the “food deficit” households spent uss than half per child for secondary education than those in the “food surplus” households - Taka 3,891 compared to Taka 8,123 per child per year. It is remarkable that even the poor families are investing substantial resources for their children’s education, although the learning outputs and outcomes from these investments are far from assured.
• Government contribution in salary subvention and other grants constituted 60.5 percent of the income of non-government schools and 70.4 percent for dakhil madrasas.
• Average annual income of a non-government secondary school in 2004 was Taka 908,000 and for dakhil madrasas Taka 571,000. ( Average enrolment per institution were respectively 555 and 292 in 2002, the latest year of published figures available from BANBEIS.)
• On an average, 54 percent of the girls enrolled in sample secondary schools and dakhil madrasas were stipend recipients. 
• Variations were noted for different regions of the country in proportions of recipients of stipends among girl students – with a low of 42 pecent recipients in rural Sylhet and high of 71 percent in rural Barisal. 
• Girls’ stipends represented in 2003-4 financial year 57 percent of government development allocation for secondary education and 19 percent of total revenue and development expenditure for all secondary education institutions.
  

Management of institutions

• Almost all schools and madrasas, with the exception of the ones run by the government, have a managing committee. Average number of committee members was 12.7 for all types of non-government secondary institutions.
• Participation of female members in the SMC was very low; only 3.4 percent of all members, in spite of the fact that almost all rural schools are co-educational. Dakhil and alim madrasas had an even lower proportion of women in managing committees. The low percentage in a committee of 11 or more members meant that most secondary education institutions did not have any woman in their managing committees.
• About a third of the SMC members were teachers by profession (either member secretary or teacher representative or teachers of other institutions)
• A quarter of the SMC members were businessmen, 17.7 percent service holders, 14.2 percent farmers and 10.4 percent were social workers. 
• Although, the managing committee is supposed to represent the community stakeholders in education, recent regulations and practice have made the selection process of the chair for the non-government secondary school committees beholden to the consent of the local M.P. The chair of the committee for all madrasas in an upozila is the Upozila Nirbahi (Executive) officer.
• Making selection of the chairperson of the SMC beholden to the local MP or a political personality has taken the process away from community choice. This has resulted frequently in placing this key responsibility in unfit hands. 

The following items have been identified as guidelines to be kept in focus in considering policy and programme priorities. 

• Expanding opportunities. Expanding opportunities for secondary education with greater equity and better quality remain the central concern in secondary education, despite growth in enrolment and dramatic advances in bringing girls into the orbit of education.
• Growth with quality and equity. With increased participation and completion in primary education, a growing recognition of secondary education as a part of basic education and improvement in transition from primary to secondary level, the social demand for secondary education will continue to rise. The major challenge, therefore, is to find ways of combining growth with quality improvement. Elements of quality enhancement, including teachers, curriculum and learning materials, learning facilities, assessment of learning and school-level management, have to be built in as integral parts of plans and strategies for the expansion of the system.
• School level action targeted at the disadvantaged. On top of non-entry of more than half of the age group, high dropout and failure to complete the cycle mean that the poor are largely deprived from secondary education opportunities. Those of the poor or somewhat less poor who manage to enter into the system are hit the hardest by the low efficiency and quality of the system. Secondary education, as a result, is less a vehicle for social mobility than a means of reinforcing existing social divisions. Poorly performing madrasas serving mostly the poor and proprietary English medium schools serving the elites are potent symbols of the divisive system.
  Two key strategies for making secondary education equity-inducing and pro-poor need to be: (a) Quality enhancement measures at the school level in non-government schools, serving the vast majority of children, which particularly target children of disadvantaged families; and (b) Modernising curriculum and teaching-learning practices in madrasas, the second most popular category of secondary education institutions. 
• Protecting and consolidating gender gain. Advances in girls’ enrolment is meaningful to the extent that this can be sustained until the end of the cycle and they realize the full benefits of education. Trageted efforts are needed, especially at the school level, to identify and remove the obstacles that hold girls back, and improve the quality of teaching and learning practices for both girls and boys.
• Improving teachers’ capabilities and performance. Registration and certification of teachers are useful moves, if these can be implemented properly. These alone, however, do not address the problem of supply of qualified teachers and of expanding opportunities that are effective in teachers’ professional development. 
  Creative initiatives are needed in these regards, which may include: contract and part-time deployment of people with required skills, who may not be professional teachers, innovative hands-on teacher skill development methods using NGO and business techniques and experience; and better quality control of growing private B.Ed courses.
• Preparing the ground for a unified system. Essential learning facilities including laboratories and libraries, teachers who are at least minimally qualified to teach key subjects, and school management mindful of quality assurance are essential prerequisites for implementation of a unified curriculum for all students up to grade ten. Progress has to be demonstrated in preparing this ground to allay the concerns of parents and students about what they may get in the bargain, how prepared students will be to cope with the separate streams at the higher secondary level, and whether they will lose a competitive edge in choosing their field of study in higher education. Moreover, all streams of secondary education should be brought under reforms aimed at developing a unified system.
  One category of necessary action would be to examine and revise the articulation, sequence, and academic load for all stages of secondary education from grade six to twelve and ensure better implementation of the curriculum. There is widespread anxiety that isolated change in the middle can be disruptive. 
• Strategies to serve key objectives by combining private and public resources. Since private expenditures are several times larger than public spending in secondary education, mobilization and use of resources for expanding educational opportunities, promoting equity and improving quality need to be based on the premise of effectively combining public and private resources for promoting key objectives, rather than plan and allocate public expenditures in isolation. Mechanisms for combining the resources and using these well need to be explored and tried out by ceding greater authority with accountability to the school level. 
• Re-thinking stipends. Stipends have boosted girls’ enrolment, but, at least two critical questions are: a) Given the overall quality problems in secondary education and low per student expenditure, do stipends starve out important inputs necessary for quality improvement – such as, laboratories, libraries, teacher training and stronger supervision? And, b) Are conditions attached to this transfer payment, which the disadvantaged sections of the population (very poor, first generation learners and girls who have to work to help their families) have difficulty to meet, further aggravating disparity? 
• Gender balance in managing committees. The School Managing Committee is seriously in default in gender balance - with a total representation of only 3.4 percent women in all observed schools, although the vast majority of schools enroll both boys and girls. Both regulations and practice must change to include more than symbolic participation of women and mothers in school management.
• Making managing committees responsive and accountable. Modification of regulations, awareness raising and active encouragement on the part of political and education authorities are needed to make the selection of the chairperson and members of the managing committees less beholden to local political personalities and more a genuine choice of the community. This key responsibility should not be placed in unfit hands who do not have the necessary capabilities or are not genuinely interested in education.
• Strategy to promote greater authority with accountability at school level. A central framework of regulations and standards is necessary, which appears to be the principal government response to the management problems and huge waste of resources; but more important is impartial and objective application of these provisions. And even more critical is for individual institutions to become responsible and accountable for promoting and maintaining standards. This aim can be supported by the government by inviting and encouraging schools to take responsibility and demonstrate their capacity to do so on the basis of agreed criteria. Once it is established by independent assessment that the schools have lived up to their obligations, these schools can be rewarded, exempted from central control and allowed to develop and follow their own higher standards. This strategy of nurturing self-regulation is likely to be an effective incentive for greater school-level responsibility with accountability.

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