Growth of private schools increases burden on Bangladesh families: study

A new report has detailed how a lack of state-sponsored education has burdened families in Bangladesh with expenses for private schooling for their children.

Households account for 71 percent of total education spending in Bangladesh, one of the highest rates in the world, according to the study launched on Wednesday.

Produced by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report and BRAC, the study explores and analyses the role of non-state actors in the education system of Bangladesh and further across South Asia.

The report called for the government to provide oversight over non-state provided education to ensure that inequalities are protected.

It said the Bangladesh government spent less than 2.5 percent of its annual GDP on the education sector throughout the 2010s.

This is considerably lower than the recommended 4 percent and has left state education struggling in both supply and quality, which has led households to spend on education, the study said.

In Bangladesh, over half the children in pre-primary education attend various types of non-state institutions, including registered non-government schools, private kindergartens, NGO schools and private religious schools.

Most growth has been at the primary level, however: 29,000 privately owned schools called kindergarten schools represent 22 percent of the total.

At 94 percent, Bangladesh has the second highest rate of private secondary education globally, according to the report.

Private actors are also strongly involved in technical and vocational education. Institutions managed by non-state actors in this sector doubled from 3,000 to more than 6,000 in Bangladesh between 2012 and 2019, while there are only some 900 state-managed institutions, the study said.

“Yet the quality of these institutions is not always standard: 96 percent of students completing public programmes achieved the highest grades on the Secondary School Certificate examination, compared with 36 percent of their peers in private programmes.”

Teachers in Bangladesh are also largely trained by the private sector. More than 60 percent of teacher training institutions are private and more than 40 percent of secondary school teachers obtain BEd degrees from non-government teacher training colleges

PRIVATE TUTORING

As a result of growth in the labour market and increasing demands for qualifications, combined with a need to supplement the deficiencies in state-provided education, the report notes a proliferation in the private tutoring and education technology industries as well.

The share of households who paid for private tutoring in Bangladesh increased in rural areas from 28 percent in 2000 to 54 percent in 2010, and in urban areas from 48 percent to 67 percent.

Private tutoring can begin at an early age. In Bangladesh, 20 percent of pre-primary school children attended private tutoring, the study found.

While the report acknowledged the benefits which civil society institutions have brought to the country’s education system, and the fact that the majority, or 69 percent of Bangladeshis interviewed for the report, “strongly agreed” that these institutions aided in the development of schooling, these advantages are “not reaped equitably”.

“As fees for NGO schools are three times higher than public schools, their benefits do not reach the poorest or most marginalised. Around 1/3 of families are forced to borrow money to cover fees for private polytechnics, leaving them in debt.”

RECOMMENDATIONS

The report urged governments to increase its involvement in the education systems. It devised five policy recommendations to enhance the quality and equity of education in South Asia:

1. Fulfil the commitment to make 1 year pre-primary and 12 years primary and secondary education free.

2. Set quality standards that apply to all state and non-state education institutions and improve state capacity to ensure their implementation.

3. Establish common monitoring and support processes that apply to all state and non-state institutions through a system of clear and standardised regulations on teacher training, curriculum, and testing.

4. Facilitate the spread of innovation through the education system for the common good.

5. Maintain the transparency, inclusivity and integrity of public education policy processes.

MPO

Bangladesh’s unique Monthly Pay Order or MPO system is in need of reforms, the study found. MPO is the mechanism by which the government pays the basic salaries and a portion of the medical allowance and some other benefits for a proportion of non-government school teaching and other staff.

Some 28,000 non-state institutions are in the MPO system, including over 16,000 secondary schools, which account for 92 percent of total secondary enrolment, 7,600 madrasas, which cover almost all students enrolled in these institutions, 1,500 primary-level ebtedayee madrasas and numerous vocational institutes and colleges.

While MPO grants are supposed to supplement the income schools generate from tuition fees, donations and other sources, most schools rely on the MPO system to fund their operations and have inadequate resources to ensure education quality, according to the report.

It said international donor assessments of the MPO system have highlighted insufficient accountability and inequitable distribution of MPO teachers.

“There is no clear mechanism to provide MPO support based on needs, resulting in a shortage of subject-based positions. Additional teachers are financed through school fees and paid less than MPO-supported teachers. There is inadequate compliance monitoring and enforcement on MPO guidelines, including performance monitoring of MPO-supported teachers.”

Areas that need improvement include putting emphasis on teacher performance and time spent on teaching management, deploying an adequate number of qualified subject-based teachers through transparent procedures, formulating and institutionalising teacher career paths and steps to improve non-government teacher selection, and providing additional incentives to serve in remote areas, the study said, citing an Asian Development Bank report of 2018.

An ongoing programme supported by the World Bank aims to rationalise and make the MPO mechanism more strategic to fill teacher gaps, but progress has stalled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A revised policy was published in 2021 with the objective of simplifying existing payment streams. The revision includes updates to staffing structures and to MPO grant application and award procedures.