Key Challenges of Pre-primary, Primary and Secondary Education in Bangladesh

The Government of Bangladesh has demonstrated strong commitment to education since

independence by formulating relevant national policies, strategies and laws, and ratifying relevant
conventions and declarations at regional and international levels. As a result, the country has
achieved substantial progress in increasing and sustaining net enrolment in primary schools from 85
per cent in 2000 to 94 percent in 2010 and achieving gender parity in both primary and secondary
school enrolment . Bangladesh is one of the top performing countries in South Asia after Sri Lanka
that has achieved gender parity in education. Despite an impressive headway, there are some
unfinished and emerging inequities that must be dealt with to sustain past progress and put the
country on the path of middle income growth with equity. For instance, the issues of quality of
learning, attendance of children in pre-primary schools; attendance, retention and performance of
children in primary and secondary schools; and disparities based on geographic locations are
prevailing concerns to government, development partners, parents and indeed all stakeholders, as
articulated in the Primary Education Development Programme III.
Enrolment of children into pre-primary schooling considered to be the foundation of and key to
primary education, is dismally low with significant variation among geographical regions, between
rural and urban, and between slums and non-slums within urban settings. Only about 13.42 per cent
of children aged five enrolled in pre-primary school in 2010. This means that about 3.41 million
preschool aged children are not enrolled in pre-primary schools. Net enrolment ratio at primary
education was 94 per cent in 2010. This implies that about 1.16 million children (6-10 years old) did
not enroll in age specific appropriate grades. Of those enrolled, 32.8 per cent (5.97 million) of school
aged children do not complete the full primary schooling cycle. About 52.6 per cent (9.05 million) of
the secondary school aged children did not enroll in age specific appropriate grades in 2010. MICS
2009 shows that 3.5 per cent of children who attended secondary school in 2008 discontinued in
2009. Female dropout rate in rural areas was higher than their male counterparts (4.1 versus 3.0 per
cent). The quality aspects of primary education continue to pose a big