5.1 The Case of Bangladesh

A. Context
B. Factors
C. Recommendations

A. Context

a. General

Bangladesh is a republic formed in 1972, following a war of independence with Pakistan, of which it had formed the eastern component since the foundation of that country in 1947. During the period of British colonial control this area was known as East Bengal and there is some ethnic and linguistic affinity with West Bengal, the neighbouring State of the Indian Federation.

Much of Bangladesh comprises part of the Ganges/Brahmaputra lower plains and delta and is subject to severe annual flooding caused by both Himalayan thaw and monsoon cyclones. Coincidence with high tides in the Bay of Bengal causes massive devastation and disaster for scores of millions of rural Bangladeshis, including the demolition of any schools they may have. Around the periphery of the country is a broken zone of higher ground which becomes the normal environment for the south-east sector which around Chittagong experiences some of the highest precipitation of rainfall in the world. The vast majority of the population (about 80 per cent) is Islamic and Bangla speaking, but there is a significant Hindu minority (about 10 per cent) and also tribal groups in the hill regions. The capital, Dhaka, is very much the primate city and the focus of the modest secondary and tertiary sectors of the economy, the majority of which consists of subsistence agriculture. The overall population density is well over 500 per square kilometre, with about 90 per cent being rural.

Bangladesh is placed in the lowest category of countries by international economic classification, with a per capita income of less that $US200 pa and could well be the poorest country in the world. Consequently its economic survival depends absolutely on international aid, and this includes such capacity as exists to provide education from public funds.

The linguistic dimension and its educational considerations has had considerable influence on political developments. During the British colonial period, English was strongly acquired by the elite which favoured that medium and utilised private and international avenues of educational advancement that still operate today. Under Pakistan rule there was an attempt to impose Urdu in schools which was vigorously opposed by the indigenous population and was a key issue in the thrust for an independent state. Having gained that independence in 1972, there was a strong Bangla policy in respect of schooling which led to the decline of English, though in recent years this has been relaxed. However, the majority of the population and especially of the females remain illiterate in either medium.

b. Education

The diagram below (Cowen and McLean 1984, p 80) illustrates the educational system of Bangladesh. The pupils surveyed were in the top class of the primary cycle with the exception of the children at the BRAC school, which offered two years of basic education to pupils who tended to be older than those in the government schools.

THE EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM OF BANGLADESH

Table 1 below gives an indication of the percentages of boys and girls enrolled in primary schools over the period 1951 - 1985. There has been much improvement but the percentage of girls out of school was still 62% in 1985.

Table 1: Age Group Population and Participation Rate at the Primary Level in Bangladesh

Year	Sex	Age-group population	Enrolment	%	Out of school population	%
1951	Male	4,102,326	1,964,414	48	2,137,912	52
	Female	3,799,003	485,022	13	3,314,001	87
1961	Male	4,868,687	2,568,278	53	2,300,403	47
	Female	4,660,743	958,451	21	3,702,298	73
1975	Male	7,140,328	4,714,000	66	2,897,829	34
	Female	6,901,046	2,739,000	40	4,441,745	60
1985	Male	9,217,860	6,714,000	73	2,686,760	27
	Female	8,905,550	3,415,000	38	3,743,650	62

(Source: S. Islam Women's education in Bangladesh: needs and issues, FREPD, Dhaka 1982, p. 50)

A similar comparison at secondary level (Table 2) reveals an even wider gap between girls' and boys' enrolment figures.

Table 2: Age-group Population and Participation at the Secondary Level in Bangladesh

Year	Sex	Age-group population	Enrolment	%	Out of school population	%
1951	Male	2,174,013	259,216	12	1,914,737	88
	Female	1,663,564	9,009	0.5	1,654,555	99.5
1961	Male	2,610,351	433,079	17	2,176,672	83
	Female	2,036,533	39,826	2	1,996,707	98
1975	Male	4,986,950	1,505,010	30	3,481,940	70
	Female	4,723,450	457,450	10	4,266,000	90
1985	Male	6,435,467	2,723,100	42	3,712,367	58
	Female	6,084,766	1,170,000	19	4,924,766	81

(Source: S. Islam, ibid, p75)

The latest figures available at the time of our visit were those for 1988 (Table 3) and show a primary school teaching force of 33,774 females and 153,098 males. Pupils number 11,285,445 but there are only 4,943,119 girls to 6,342,326 boys. Girls' enrolment drops from one and a half million in Class 1 to 590,000 in Class 5.

Table 3: Number of Primary Schools, Teachers and Students by Management and Sex, 1988

Management	Number of Institutions	Number of Teachers		Number of Students
		Total	Female	Total	Female
Government	37,681	157,663	28,294	9,750,581	4,281,615
Non-Government	7,765*	29,209	5,480	1,534,864	661,504
Total:	45,383	186,872	33,774	11,285,445	4,943,119

*Of these only 4,414 schools are registered.

(Source: Ministry of Education Handbook on Educational Statistics of Bangladesh, BANBEIS, Dhaka 1989, p 13)

Secondary school enrolment follows a similar pattern as can be seen in Table 4.

Table 4: Secondary Schools Enrolment by Grade and Sex, 1988

Year/Grade	Sex	VI	VII	VIII	IX	X	Total
1988	Total	729962	673811	589589	449207	364978	2,807547
	Girls	269161	232036	194910	129940	102096	928143

(Source: Ministry of Education, ibid, p 6)

c. Primary Perceptions

In Bangladesh the number of pupils surveyed was curtailed by the incidence of public holidays and a strike, but the schools visited provided a useful range. They included a rural school established by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), a Government semi-rural primary school, and an urban one where the shifts were arranged by sex and we worked with a class of girls. Our 100 respondents then were mainly female, although there were some boys at the rural schools visited. The age range in the classes included in the survey was 8-15 years, but all the older children were in the rural schools.

Among rural pupils, all the boys were involved in helping in the fields, but very few of the girls. Sweeping, fetching water and preparing food were however very much girls' tasks. The care of siblings seemed to be one for either sex. As might be expected from the traditions of the country, it is the boys who go to the market, rarely girls. Among the urban elite girls, 70 per cent never go to the store or market. There was a high degree of consensus that girls help at home more than boys. but among both girls and boys in rural areas an alarming 92 per cent said that they sometimes miss school because they have to help at home and over 50 per cent said that it is difficult to go to school every day. These were by far the highest scores in any country or type of location in the survey. Even among elite urban girls 43 per cent were sometimes missing school to help at home.

As far as attitude was concerned 85 per cent of the rural children thought that girls need to go to school as much as boys. However, 38 per cent (half of the boys and a third of the girls) agreed that "Girls don't really need to go to school". This proposition was strongly refuted by the single-sex class of urban girls.

Both rural and urban pupils strongly wished (97 per cent) that school were nearer to their homes. Fathers appeared to be very supportive of both sons' and daughters' education but rural mothers were less sure about it apparently - only 77 per cent of the rural children (by far the lowest in the survey) agreed that "My mother wants me to come to school very much". And this is despite the fact that in the rural schools we were looking at the children of relatively well-off and literate families with 82 per cent of their mothers said to be "good at reading and writing". Second only to rural Vanuatu, 41 per cent of the rural children expected to leave school at the end of the year, although like children in the other countries in the survey, over 90 per cent would like to go to secondary school.

Only 74 per cent of the rural pupils said they intended to marry and 80 per cent of the urban girls. It is striking that there is almost 100 per cent agreement that 0-2 boys and 0-2 girls would be their ideal family. Bangladesh, along with India, seems to have successfully persuaded its young people, in theory at least, that they should have smaller families. Children in Cameroon, Jamaica and Vanuatu are far less restrained in their plans.

Girls' career preferences in Bangladesh were the most limited in the survey: rural girls opted for 'doctor' or 'teacher' almost without exception and 88 per cent of the urban girls said they wanted to be doctors. The lack of range in career preferences would appear to be linked to the lack of role models for the girls: only a tiny percentage of their mothers were working outside the home.

B. Factors

i. Geographical

At the local scale in rural Bangladesh the issues of female security and access to primary schooling combine to the extent that a distance of more than 2 kilometres can prevent female take-up of primary schooling. Indeed the percentage of children wishing schools were nearer to their homes was 95% in the rural Bangladesh schools surveyed: the highest in any of the countries visited.

On the larger scale the incompleteness of the schooling network, leading to marked disparities in the distribution of educational opportunity: the tendency for the poorer teachers to be on the periphery of the system where access is most difficult; the concentration of single sex schooling and related accommodation in urban areas, the physical disruption of the rainy season with its increased costs of access to school by water, all combine to operate against the educational interests of rural girls to a greater extent than their male counterparts.

The rural/urban imbalance in provision, enrolment, drop-out and female literacy rates is very striking.

ii. Socio-Cultural

Societal norms, especially parental attitudes, are key pressures in this case, and operate against the educational progress of girls and women to different degrees in each of the four main components of the population: the rural poor (constituting the vast majority); the rural elite; the urban poor; the urban elite. The rural/urban dichotomy is stark and extreme.

There is a fundamental cultural bias in favour of males which is most effective in the poor majority. Rural girls are confined to the village and as far as possible to the individual home. This is partly for their safety and security in view of the widespread fear of violent and sexual assault upon the female person. Should a girl be violated, then not only would this be a personal tragedy, but also an economic setback for the family as the prospects of marriage would have been significantly damaged. Hence the strict security and early betrothal which is endemic and which further constrain a girl's chances of schooling. Being so confined to the home, the majority of Bangladeshi girls are likely to be more affected than their brothers by the extremely low levels of literacy obtaining among adult females. A combination of very hard physical labour and poor diet means that the minority of girls who do get to travel to government schools, are often not in a fit state to respond to the educational challenge which, in the form in which it is provided, is largely alien to their immediate needs. In any case, in the context outlined above, the majority of teachers will be male, and as such unacceptable to the parents of girls. Female teachers are rare in government rural schools because, for the same reason, few girls from such an environment would have proceeded through the system to the level of teacher training, and urban females would not wish to work in the countryside for reasons of security and lack of facilities.

In the rural locations then, it is not enough simply to provide a school as girls will not necessarily attend it. When poverty forces a choice between a boy and a girl going to school, the boy will have preference. Boys have far more importance than girls and in fact the high birth-rate to a certain extent is the result of parents trying to get sons and enough of them to ensure that at least some survive. A girl, despite her contribution to domestic work, is regarded as a burden in terms of dowry and as too transitory to be worth investment in her education- in some villages all girls over 12 are married. The prolonged cycle of child bearing of her mother, the large number of siblings and the burden of domestic and agricultural tasks ensure that a girl is likely to be kept at home to help rather than sent to school. Seclusion in the past has been a middle-class/elite phenomenon: the rural poor cannot afford it but there is still a tendency to think that "the home is the most respectable place for a woman". Girls do not go to the shop or market; boys do. These deep-rooted attitudes combine with more pressing economic factors in making decisions about whether a rural girl will go to school or not.

Among the urban middle classes the education of daughters is now encouraged and indeed has flourished in recent decades, especially in Dhaka. Such girls are achieving very highly across the whole range of subjects up to and including university levels, including the so called areas of male preserve such as engineering science. Indeed there is a surplus of female professionals, including teachers, in the cities. However, even the educated female elite suffers discrimination when it comes to promotion to positions of some power and influence. In all the sectors of society mentioned above, it is still the attitude of fathers that is the key to female opportunities in education.

iii. Health

This factor was surprisingly rarely mentioned by professionals and students, but it was identified by parents. Two dimensions are readily apparent. First there is the general medical effect of living in conditions of severe poverty, and the particular point of the extra malnutrition of girls due to the preference given to boys and men. Many rural children reach school hungry and this adversely affects their performance. There is apparently no government food programme for schools as found in some corresponding countries.

The malnutrition of girls, their lower resistance to disease and their higher mortality rate are obvious causes of concern. When survival is the issue, education must take second place.

Secondly, there is the area of birth control and the particular issues of 'young' pregnancies and their physical and social effects. The work of the Asia Foundation's population programme in Bangladesh has shown that help in providing secondary schooling for individual girls can have a distinct retarding effect on the age of marriage, the age of first birth and the exit of females from formal education. We strongly recommend it.

The family size amongst the children surveyed was as follows:

1 - 3 children	33.3 %
4 - 6 children	54.1%
7 - 9 children	12.6%

The children's own ideas about their future offspring showed that their plans are for much smaller families, not only in the elite urban groups where this might be expected, but also in poorer rural ones where the work of BRAC is obviously having an influence.

iv. Economic

The socio-economic status of parents seems to be the crucial factor in deciding whether girls go to school or not. It is poverty which is the main hurdle.

Costs are both direct and hidden, leading parents to favour the education of boys rather than girls, that is if any of their children are to attend school. The pressures of poverty are extreme and, given the patrilocal system obtaining, investment in a girl's schooling tends to be seen as a loss since any benefit would accrue to her husband's family. Furthermore, in advance of marriage, the girl's labour would be needed at home in traditional female roles. If school is attended then direct costs arise in respect of such aspects as books and other materials, appropriate clothing, and transportation by water in the severe rainy season.

In rural areas girls' labour in the home and on the farm is an economic necessity because it frees others to earn outside, and is valuable to the mother in terms of coping with a 5.00 am - 10.00 pm day of "life-long invisible work". Girls and women are unpaid family labourers. The collection of water and firewood are heavy jobs and recent more intensive cropping by men has led to more post-harvest work for women. Many mothers cannot spare their daughters for schooling. Wage-work for cash may also be essential to the survival of the family but this tends to involve boys more than girls. In urban areas girls are surrogate mothers, freeing women to work outside the home. The survey revealed that 92% of the pupils involved sometimes could not attend school because they had to do jobs for their mothers and fathers. This was the highest percentage in any country, and shows that helping at home radically affects not only initial enrolment but also attendance by those children who do go to school. It also affects drop-out as the school terms clash with the agricultural cycles and those who miss school over several weeks drop behind, despair and ultimately abandon school.

Traditional outside jobs for girls and women such as rice-milling are declining because of mechanisation and even in low socio-economic groups men prefer women to take on jobs which can be done at home. Learning skills which can help them to work outside the home would assist women not only economically, but lead to them taking more part in decision-making and having more freedom of movement and experience of holding and handling money, all of which would have positive implications for their daughters.

v. Religious

Among the various people interviewed or surveyed, religion was not reckoned to be a direct factor of any significance to the issue of female educational opportunity. However, it is invoked by some of those who wish to constrain such opportunity, so that it operates implicitly through perceived norms. In view of the fact that there is no religious constraint in this respect, it would be helpful if religious leaders were to espouse the cause of girls' education, for there can be no significant development in Bangladesh without it.

vi. Legal

Like health, this factor was hardly raised by respondents but it is also significant. Legal norms assume a woman to be dependent and therefore to have no need for access to income or property in her own right. Women remain statutory minors. Illiterate women with no knowledge of the law are helpless in the face of injustice.

The question of dowry for instance has become increasingly important as economic conditions have worsened: dowry violence is on the increase. A wife however has little legal redress when things go wrong.

Another issue relates to early marriage. The law relating to the minimum age of marriage might be strengthened in some way. Also more women should become conversant with the interpretation and formulation of letters with legal intent. At present, safeguards against the misuse or neglect of existing legislation, especially in the area of physical abuse, seem very difficult to operate.

vii. Political/Administrative

Informants complained of lack of real political will in respect of supporting educational development in general and that of girls in particular, despite the good intentions expressed in Educational Plans over the years. One of the problems of access for girls is that the system is far from complete. Many villages have no primary school which makes the need to travel too big a barrier for most boys and girls of school age. A five year system of UPE has been pronounced for achievement by 2000 AD. In the meantime certain initiatives have been taken by the government to encourage greater female participation, for example: free schooling for girls up to the age of 8; lower entry requirements for women to certain programmes of teacher training; a cooperative attitude to NGOs working on projects to promote female participation. Nonetheless there is no real push at secondary level in this direction.

While there may be strong central government, the extremely weak nature of local administration means that such initiatives as may be attempted are ineffective in practice. Among the short-comings are the lack of effective supervision of primary teachers, which in turn increases parental concern and caution. Weak local administration also fails to check the traditional power of rural elites who in general do not support the raising of the level of awareness of the rural masses, including the perception of potential benefits arising from increased educational opportunities for girls.

viii. Education

"My mother wants me to come to school very much" - only 77% of the rural children in the survey agreed with this statement: the lowest percentage in any of the countries studied.

"Girls don't really need to go to school" - 38% of the rural children agreed with this, one of the highest scores in the survey, despite the fact that a BRAC school was in existence and influencing attitudes to girls' education in the area.

There is no doubt that the shortcomings highlighted by the educational profile of Bangladesh show that this factor is itself significant in the constraint of female participation in schooling. Most fundamental is the low level of literacy, particularly among adult rural females, most of whom are mothers. This must affect the educational potential of both male and female children, but the mother additionally acts as a role model for the girls and the fact that they are confined to the home and its immediate environs means that their male counterparts are likely to enjoy a richer experience albeit within a largely illiterate setting.

Textbooks themselves militate against improved attitudes towards girls' status and education by the invisibility of women in texts and by the low social value of women presented when they do appear.

The incompleteness of the system, its limited relevance to the short-term survival imperative, its extremely poor amenities (there are often no separate toilets for girls which is another factor causing their absence), the high incidence of mismanagement at local level and absenteeism by (male) teachers all combine to have a negative effect on the issue in question.

There are not enough single sex schools at secondary level to encourage parents to permit their daughters to attend, and the schedule and hours of government schools are at odds with the economic and ecological cycle of rural communities. Greater flexibility is needed if the figure of at least 50% dropout of girls during years 1 and 2 in some areas is to be reduced. Despite the initiative in respect of attracting female entrants to teaching by lowering entry requirements, there are still many thousands more primary teachers needed over the next decade if the achievement of UPE is to have any real meaning.

As far as secondary education is concerned there is a real need for incentives in the form of scholarships for girls, particularly the rural ones, and for the provision of safe hostel facilities.

ix. Initiatives

Bangladesh seems to be fertile ground for national and international projects in education, some of which have a direct bearing on the educational prospects of women and girls.

Among these the pioneering work of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) is outstanding and provides a possible model for a national scale assault on the problem of girls' educational opportunities. The work of BRAC is so well known that no further comment will be made on it other than that the writers strongly recommend the model.

· The Asia Foundation/USAID population project including enhancement of secondary education for girls has been mentioned above.

· Very useful research on education in Bangladesh, including the gender factor is undertaken by FREED, there is a primary teacher training thrust under government auspices and a UNESCO backed national-scale curriculum and textbook programme at the NCTBB. There are numerous other NGOs in the field.

· The Women's Ministry project currently funded by NORAD, which links with BRAC in its education components, illustrates well the need to operate on a broad front, making sure that education is not isolated. Here it is integrated with issues concerning health, nutrition and family planning and operates in every province of the country.

· The government's plans include more scholarships for girls, more ITT places and hostel accommodation for women, the placing of more women teachers in primary schools, and a relaxation of qualification requirements for intending women teachers.

C. Recommendations

Our major recommendations (not necessarily in order of priority) would be:

i. that support be given to BRAC to enable its primary non-formal education work to expand educationally and geographically.

ii. that special consideration be given to the articulation between primary and secondary schooling with a view to encouraging the products of BRAC and similar schemes to continue their schooling. This could involve the provision of new secondary schools with adequate residential facilities for girls in particular.

iii. we were particularly impressed by the Asia Foundation Scholarship Scheme for promoting girls' secondary education and would enthusiastically approve support given to this or similar schemes.

iv. that, in rural areas in particular, aid for scholarships for girls to attend secondary schools be provided.

v. that consideration be given to funding a pilot scheme of new single-sex secondary schools for girls with safe hostel facilities for both pupils and female teachers.

vi. that incentives be increased such as abolition of fees, provision of free uniforms, books and meals.

vii. that support be considered for feeding schemes in primary and secondary schools where such a facility might encourage and enable the poorest families to send their boys and girls to school.

viii. that support be given to assist the further integration of the products of the work of NGOs in this area and the government's scheme of education and training.

ix. that support to similar NGOs working with the education of rural women be considered, especially where the work is similar to that of BRAC.

x. that text-book revision/development schemes should be encouraged where particular attention could be paid to how girls and women are presented in texts and illustrations in school books. The influence of school materials on the ideas and attitudes of both boys and girls could be an important factor in how the next generation of female children participate in education: today's pupils are tomorrow's parents.

xi. that initiatives be encouraged to develop technical and vocational education for both sexes especially, but not exclusively, as a 'second chance' for dropouts from formal schooling.

xii. that Bangladesh be assisted in reviewing and expanding its system of teacher-training especially for primary school work.

xiii. that assistance be provided to enable the school day and the school year to be adjusted to the realities of rural life and the demands of rural economies.

xiv. that consideration be given to providing secure residential accommodation for female teachers, especially in rural areas.

xv. there is a need to improve the level of educational policy implementation at the local level in Bangladesh. This would involve the training of considerable numbers of personnel in systems of implementation and delivery. Their role in the implementation of policy would be a practical one of animation, advice and support rather than mere administration. The opportunity could be taken to train a significant number of women in this work.

xvi. that support be considered for rationalising the provision of schooling in Dhaka where rapid urbanisation may be adding to already complex patterns of demand.

xvii. although health was not a factor perceived by many respondents to be influential, it is in fact almost certainly affecting the educational well-being of girls in particular, so some kind of integrated operation linking medicine, educational and economic development in an integrated way could be considered and piloted. Successful schemes already established have the following characteristics: the provision of text-books, materials and stationery female aides to accompany girls to school, school lunch programmes and free medical facilities. The nutrition and health of girls is an area for priority action within any educational programme.

xviii. that further assistance be considered for improving the standards of traditional agricultural practice especially where this will enhance the experience, status and income of females.

xix. that, especially in rural communities, projects should be developed combining pre-school initiatives with income generation and basic literacy and numeracy skills for rural women.

xx. that efforts be made to raise the level of male awareness of the community and family economic benefits likely to arise from increased participation of women and girls in educational and income generation activity.