Drop_Out_Report09[1]

Primary School Drop Out

Participatory Evaluation: Causes of Primary School Drop-Out

Contributors: Jamil H Chowdhury1

Dhiraj Kanti Chowdhury2

Md. Shamsul Hoque3

Shawkat Ahmad4

Tasnuva Sultana5

Director (Research and Evaluation), RTM International 1

Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist, RTM International 2

Ex-Director, Directorate of Primary Education 3

Research Associate, RTM International 4

Research Associate, RTM International 5


Foreword

Government of Bangladesh is committed to ensure the rights of basic education for the children and its constitution clearly envisages, “Establishing a uniform, mass oriented and universal system of education and extending free and compulsory education for all children”. To fulfill this commitment the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) is implementing a sector-wide approach Called Second Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP_II) for the purpose of improving the quality of primary education in the country. As a result of the various efforts of the government the Gross Enrollment Rate and Net Enrollment Rate (NER) in primary education have increased significantly over the last two decades. However, the completion rate in primary education is almost half of the enrolled students. This indicates that a large number of students are dropping out from the primary education system. The high proportion of drop out of children is not only causing huge resource loss but also hindering the progress in achieving educational goal or MDG. Being concerned at this situation, DPE has decided to assess the real picture of drop-out situation of the country. This qualitative study “Participatory Evaluation: Causes of Primary School Drop-Out” has been undertaken to capture the basic determinants of drop-out behavior in primary schools, the root causes of drop out and the school community’s views of remedial measures to address the drop-out problem. We intend to share the findings of the study with the people at the frontier of primary education system-the teachers, their supervisors and the community. The stakeholders at all levels need to be apprised about the real state of affairs in the schools. The study has identified various demand and supply level problems. DPE, on the basis of the findings and some of the recommendations will help policy maker to develop a strategy to reduce drop out to a large extent. The study has indicated that the problems of drop out are common in remote, inaccessible and poverty prone areas. I hope that this report will help the policy makers to undertake alternative strategies to address the problems and identify areas where improvement in supply side intervention will reduce the problem. We express our sincere gratitude to UNICEF for providing technical and financial support for conducting this study. Other development partners who are assisting us in improving the system will also use the report and come forward with necessary suggestions and recommendations in the light of the findings. We congratulate the members of the study team and RTM International for their good work.

Shyamal Kanti Ghosh June 2009 Director General

Directorate of Primary Education

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Acknowledgement

The study “Participatory Evaluation: Causes of Primary School Drop out” was conducted by RTM International during March-June 2009 on behalf of Directorate of Primary Education with financial support from UNICEF, Bangladesh. We are first of all thankful to DPE for putting trust on us and for giving us the opportunity to accomplish such an interesting and important assignment. We are extremely thankful to Mr. Md. Abdul Mojid Shah Akond, Director (M&E), DPE for his encouraging support and technical guidance. We greatly appreciate the role of Mr. Humayun Kabir, Assistant Director (M&E), DPE, for his continuous moral and administrative support and excellent coordination. Without his continuous support and cooperation at DPE it would have been impossible to accomplish the study on time. We are very thankful to Mr. Romij Ahmed, Statistician, MIS Cell, DPE, who was extremely generous to give his valuable time for selection of catchment areas in different locations We express our heartfelt gratitude to Ms. Katrina Rosemary Hudacin, Education Program Officer, UNICEF, for various types of technical support and cooperation she extended to RTM and to the research team during the process of conduction of the evaluation study. Her involvement and constant monitoring were instrumental in ensuring the quality of data as she not only contributed as a resource person and but also visited the teams in the field and provided useful feedback on the performance. We are also thankful to all the officials of DPE and UNICEF who visited the field during the study for their valuable opinion and guidance that assisted the process of field work. We greatly appreciate the cooperation of the Upazilla level Education officials (UEO & AUEO) who were extremely cordial and supportive to the study team members. We are also thankful to the Head Teachers and Assistant Teachers of all the schools visited during the study for their excellent support not only in providing school data but also in establishing linkage with the community. Many of the teachers provided useful information that enriched the study findings. We also thank the SMC members for their participation in the discussion at such a short notice. We are grateful to the numerous dropped out children, their parents and parents of other children studying in the school for being very cooperative. Many villagers have given us lot of information in informal and casual discussions and during transect walk. We also thank the local government representatives who participated in this evaluation as individuals and also provided valuable information which otherwise would not have been available. We highly appreciate the efforts and hard work of all the members of the study teams especially the facilitators, the co-facilitators and note takers who had taken real trouble of traveling some really remote and inaccessible areas of the country where food and accommodation were uncertain. We are grateful to Prof. Saleh Motin, ex Director General, DPE for his initial involvement and contribution and regret his sudden withdrawal for personal reason. We are especially thankful to Mr. Md. Shamsul Hoque, ex Director, DPE for joining the RTM team and enriching the report with his valuable input and experience. Syed Anwarul Islam Executive Director Research Training and Management International

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Table of Contents

Foreword....................................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgement ...................................................................................................................................... ii Acronyms ..................................................................................................................................................... v Executive summary ................................................................................................................................... vi Section 1: Background and objectives................................................................................ 1 1.1 Background....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Objectives ......................................................................................................................... 1 Section 2: Methodology ...................................................................................................... 2 2.1 Methods & techniques .................................................................................................... 2 2.2 Sample coverage............................................................................................................... 2 2.3 Limitations of the study..................................................................................................3 Section 3: Literature review ................................................................................................. 6 Section 4: Basic determinants of drop out behavior .......................................................... 9 4.1 The Problem of definition and documentation ......................................................... 9 4.2 Economic condition .....................................................................................................10 4.3 Availability of child employment ...............................................................................11 4.4 Shortage of teacher/skilled teacher and teacher attendance ..................................11 4.4.1 Teacher vacancy.............................................................................................................11 4.4.2 Teacher student ratio ...................................................................................................12 4.4.3 Teacher attendance .......................................................................................................12 4.4.4 Contact hours ................................................................................................................12 4.4.5 Teachers training ..........................................................................................................12 4.4.6 Teacher qualification ....................................................................................................13 4.4.7 Teaching learning environment ..................................................................................13 4.5 Private tutor/guide .......................................................................................................13 4.6 Teacher commitment and attitude .............................................................................14 4.7 Accessibility ...................................................................................................................15 4.8 School stipend program ...............................................................................................16 4.9 Infrastructure .................................................................................................................17 4.10 Local environment .......................................................................................................19 4.11 Role of SMC ..................................................................................................................19 4.12 Role of local government .............................................................................................20 4.13 Corruption and mis governance .................................................................................21 4.14 The family demography ...............................................................................................23 4.15 Monitoring and supervision ........................................................................................23 4.16 Other determinants ......................................................................................................24 4.16.1 School tiffin ....................................................................................................................24 4.16.2 Parents teachers association (PTA).............................................................................24 4.16.3 Teachers beat students..................................................................................................24 4.16.4 Para teacher ...................................................................................................................25 4.16.5 Eve teasing......................................................................................................................25 4.16.6 Tendency towards religious education .......................................................................25 4.17 Existence of pre-primary education............................................................................26 4.18 Flexible school timing ..................................................................................................26 4.19 Performance determinants of high and low dropout schools ...............................26

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Section 5: Root causes of primary school drop-out .......................................................... 28 5.1 Poverty ............................................................................................................................29 5.2 Child labor ......................................................................................................................31 5.3 Parents education and perception ...............................................................................32 5.4 Early marriage ................................................................................................................33 5.5 Care giving of siblings/ helping father .......................................................................34 5.6 Cost of education...........................................................................................................34 5.7 Child performance.........................................................................................................35 5.8 Migration.........................................................................................................................36 5.9 Repetition........................................................................................................................36 5.10 Death/disability or sickness of earning member ......................................................37 5.11 The voices of drop-out children..................................................................................37 5.12 A few anecdotal evidence ............................................................................................38 Section 6: Remedial measures........................................................................................... 39 6.1 Perception of parents/community people.................................................................39 6.2 Views of SMC ................................................................................................................39 6.3 Recommendations from teachers................................................................................40 6.4 Suggestions from local government representatives ................................................40 Section: 7 Discussions and recommendations.................................................................. 41 References ..........................................................................................................................................46 Annex A : List of data collection team members.................................................................................47

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Primary School Drop-Out

Acronyms

AUEO Assistant Upazilla Education Officer

ASPR Annual Sector Performance Report

C-in-Ed Certificate in Education

CREATE Consortium for Research on Educational Access Transition and Equity

DPE Directorate of Primary Education

EFA Education for All

FGD Focus Group Discussion

GER Gross Enrolment Rate

GOB Government of Bangladesh

GPS Government Primary School

HT Head Teacher

MICS Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey

NER Net Enrolment Rate

NGO Non Government Organization

PRA Participatory Rapid Appraisal

PE Primary Education

PTA Parents Teacher Association

PEDP-II Second Primary Education Development Program

RNGPS Registered Non Government Primary School

ROSC Reaching Out Of School Children

SMC School Management Committee

UEO Upazilla Education Officer

UNICEF United Nations Children’s Fund

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Executive Summary

Background and objectives In recent years, the Government of Bangladesh has implemented a number of projects to increase access of primary education for all school-age children and to improve the quality of education. The Second Primary Education Development Program (PEDP-II) is one of several projects. One of the major objectives of PEDP-II is to increase enrolment, attendance and the rate of completion of primary education cycle. The school census information reveals that the primary education dropout rate in Government Primary Schools (GPS) and Registered Non-Government Primary Schools (RNGPS) has increased from 47.2% in 2005 to 50.5% in 2007 which also needs further investigation. Although quantitative data from various sources are available a qualitative study in this respect was felt necessary. RTM International was assigned the responsibility of conducting the study by UNICEF and DPE. This study therefore was undertaken with the following objectives: • To provide basic determinants of dropout behavior in primary school.

• To capture the root causes of primary school drop out.

• To capture school community’s views of remedial measures to address drop out.

Methods and techniques

The main purpose of the study was to investigate the primary school dropout behaviors through participatory methods and qualitative techniques like FGD with parents and SMC, in-depth interview of parents, key informant interview of teachers and case studies of drop out children. Interviews of local government representatives were done in 25 high and low drop out school catchment areas of urban and rural locations all over the country with divisional coverage as well as coverage of geographical diversity such as ‘char’, ‘haor’, riverine and coastal areas and off shore island. A total of 25 FGDs with parents, 25 with SMC, interviews of 50 teachers and 50 parents and 12 case studies of drop out children were conducted.

Limitation

This study being qualitative has several limitations. The sample size and areas are not representative of the country because the emphasis was more on geographical diversity rather than regional representation. The study purposefully selected more high drop out areas to understand the nature of the problem intensively. The knowledge and results produced should, therefore, be used to draw insights and not be generalized. Proprotion or percentages used are likely to be unique to the relatively few people and specific geographical locations. Poverty has been cited as the number one cause of school drop out for various reasons. First, the study selected more remote and poverty prone areas. Most study participants especially parents and dropped out boys and girls are from the poor families. Even in urban areas people who lived in the catchment were mostly poor. Poor people tend to instantly cite poverty at the root of everything. Because whatever cause that results from poverty is generically also perceived as poverty. So, poverty is the overarching reason and should not be read in isolation.

Determinants of drop out Drop out behavior is determined by various socio-economic and management factors that include economic condition of people, local environment, availability of child employment, accessibility, school infrastructure and availability of teachers, their attendance, qualification and skill, teaching materials and teaching learning environment, school stipend program, family demography, role of SMC, and monitoring and supervision.

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Drop out of school children are higher in rural areas where most people are poor and landless. In the distant riverine chars, offshore islands, low-lying ‘haor’ areas, and hard to access hill tract villages poverty is widespread and drop out is relatively high. In the reported high dropout of several urban schools, it was evidenced by study participants that people in catchment area are mostly from the poorest section of the community. Drop out is again lower in rural areas where local environment is better in terms of high literacy, availability other educational institutions, economic opportunity and market access with better road communication. In such situations poverty may not be the prime determinant. However in some urban locations the local conditions are unlikely to influence the family behavior because conditions of slums are not education friendly and some of the catchment residents are seasonal migrants. Easy availability of child employment such as in north east for extraction of sand and stone by boys, in the south west for catching shrimp fries and working in bidi factories by both boys and girls tempt them to earning. In urban areas boys easily get employment in factories, shops and tea stalls and as transport workers while girls are preferred to work as domestic help and as garment workers. Shortage of teachers as well as teacher vacancy was reported mostly in inaccessible areas. The same geographical locations also suffer from irregular attendance, late arrival and early departure of teachers. No such problem was however reported in urban or better accesible rural areas. These affect the learning environment and reduce the contact hours causing students to become irregular and less interested in the study. Parents and local government representative also showed concern about the skill and qualification of the teachers. The community also spoke about the teacher’s lack of commitment as effective home visits to reduce dropout were rarely authenticated. The study participants everywhere acknowledged the benefit of the school stipend program that has positively influenced enrollment, attendance and retention. Many parents even with low level of awareness send their children to school with the expectation of receiving the stipend money. As urban poor were not getting stipend, introduction of stipend in urban schools could have reduced drop out. Teachers in many rural schools believe that retention of girls is more influenced by stipend than that of the boys as girls are motivated to continue school to get the benefit of secondary school stipend. Parents in 15 out of 25 locations believed that not getting stipend was a reason for drop out of children. Many deserving families that enrolled their children with the expectation of receiving stipend were frustrated for not receiving it and at some point lost interest in sending their children to school. Stipend recipients who become repeaters for poor academic performance are deprived of stipend and are reported to drop out for the same reason. Accessibility in terms of road or boat communication especially in char and haor areas and seasonal flooding affect regular or seasonal attendance of children. Teachers residing away from the catchment in those locations also fail to attend regularly and timely causing the loss of school days and hours. Teachers who are not locals dislike to be posted in inaccessible areas and posts of teachers in some cases remain vacant for years affecting classroom teaching with high teacher student ratio. In urban or rural accessible areas this was not reported to be a problem. Accesibilty affected the girls more than the boys as girls avoided long distance travel and felt shy to wade across the flood water. School infrastructure seems to be another influencing factor to determine drop out or attract children to school. There are at least three schools which have only one room. Even with double shift more than one class in a single room can neither attract students for long nor there be healthy teaching learning environment. Out of the 25 schools visited 11 schools had no tube well and two schools, in char and haor areas, had no latrine. There was common latrine in 7 schools used by boys, girls and teachers. Where there was only one or two latrines girls rarely used the latrine. Without latrine facilities boys of upper grades and particularly girl students feel shy and would avoid coming to school. As the study was not an impact assessment study, it was not possible to ascertain whether PEDP II interventions had any positive or negative impact on school drop out.

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Family demography such as high fertility among poor families, death, disability or prolonged illness, polygamy, divorce, and separation also may determine the drop out behavior. The study has evidenced in many areas that girls are taken away from school to take care of the younger siblings. Boys are also compelled to stop going to school after the sudden death or disability of father or other earning members. It was evidenced that in most places SMCs were not performing up to the desired level. Although parents in their FGDs in 19 out of 25 locations and 60% local government representatives said that SMCs were not doing anything to prevent drop out, teachers in contrast to the parents in 18 locations, however, reported that SMCs were doing their job properly. Most of the SMC members in their FGD claimed that they had been playing their role to increase enrollment and prevent drop out. But no evidence in this regard was found from any other group. The study also evidenced in a few places from FGDs with SMCs that some of its their members were not aware of their roles and responsibilities. In many places they also acknowledged that they needed training to understand their role better. Effective role of SMC could have minimized drop out of school children. In the low drop out schools visited both in rurlal and urban areas, parents and teachers both reported the SMCs to be active. A vast majority of local government representatives perceived that they had little role to play as they were not in the SMC. Almost 90 percent of the female local government representatives interviewed were not aware of the role of SMC while this level of awareness was just reverse among their male counterparts most having reasonable level of such awareness. Although the role of local governemnt representatives is not a determinant for school drop out, the assumption was that the proprotion of drop out could have been less with their effective oversight role. Other issues that indirectly affected school performance included various types of corruption and mis-governance related to attendance of teachers, dependence on para teacher, distribution of stipend money, monitoring and supervision, recording and reporting, misappropriation of development fund and private tuition. There is a governance issue related to the record keeping and reporting system as more than 50% of the schools did not maintain proper record of drop out children. In some schools discrepancies in record keeping was clearly visible as the data provided did not match with what was detected during field visits in the catchment villages. Other determinants included lack of school tiffin, inactive PTA, child beating and eve teasing in a few urban locations.

Root causes of drop out While interpreting the various causes of drop out question might arise why poverty has been rated on top of all other causes. It is not surprising in a country where more than 40% people live below the poverty line. One main reason could be that the selected sample areas were not regionally representative as more remote, inaccessible and poverty prone areas were selected. It is, however, important to observe that although poverty has been rated as the number one reason, all other causes of drop out including child labour, cost of education, migration etc. are the results of poverty. So, poverty is the overarching or underlying cause and should not be read in isolation of those other causes that result from poverty. More than 80 percent of study participants acknowledged that poverty of the family was the number one reason for drop out of primary school children. Poor families have low level of awareness and they also need the support of their children for earning Child labor has been reported by three-fifths of the study participants as the second most dominant reason for drop out of primary school children. Mostly children from grades three and four are sent to work by many poor families. It has been reported by teachers in both urban and rural areas that easy opportunity to earn sometimes lead the families to decide to send children to work rather than to school. Parents’ lack of awareness and education was perceived as the third most important problem responsible for drop out of primary school children. Many, however, believed that the level of awareness was much better than what it was few years back. But parents mostly of first generation learners failed to perceive the value of education.

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The study participants perceived that cost of education involved in paying examination fees on time, hiring of private tutor, buying adequate stationeries, uniform/dress, or teacher prescribed guidebook was also directly responsible for drop out of children. Cost of education affects the boys than the girls as girls are likely receive stipend also in the secondary school. When boys put pressure to meet the expenses for private tutor, dress, stationeries and examination fees etc. parents tend to stop sending them to school. Although the practice of early marriage does not persist in all geographical locations, about a half of the study participants rated this as the fifth major cause of drop out affecting primary school girls. Early marriage is more prevalent in remote char areas, coastal islands, conservative areas of south east and parts of poverty prone North Bengal. A vast majority of teachers and a few groups of parents found a direct causal relationship between repetitions and drop out. Repeaters, both boys and girls, grow bigger than their peers and feel shy to come to school. Parents also lose interest in the education of repeaters and send them for work. Eighty percent teachers and one-sixth of parents reported that rural-urban and at times urban-rural seasonal migration cause drop out of primary school children. Study participants believed that migration affect the school going children through disruption or discontinuation of study when the possibilty of admission into another school is remote. Family migration equally affects both boys and girls but girls are sometimes pulled by the prospect of getting job in the garment factories as reported by parents and teachers in a few locations. Teachers in the central urban location said that intra-city migration by floating/slum population also causes school drop out. As few shools kept any record of the migrated children, it is not possible to tell anything about the trend of migration from this type of qualitative study. FGD parents in 9 locations and on the overall about a quarter of the study participants said that in large families partcularly among the poverty groups, elder girls are usually required to take care of younger siblings at the cost of school. They also reported that boys are also sometimes required to assist the father in domestic work or are engaged in labor when there are too many mouths to feed in high fertility areas. Parents in nine locations and about one third of the teachers said that there were the ever reluctant, inattentive, play truant, dull and spoilt (bad association) children who were likely to drop out. Although community perceive such children to be responsible for their academic failure, the school probably fail to attract them or do not take necessary measures to take them back to school. These types of children were commonly boys rather than girls. A few FGD participants and some of the drop out students reported sudden death, disability or prolonged illness of father or other earning members in the family as one of the root causes of drop out. This happens, as the FGD participants perceived, among the lower income group and girls and boys are equally affected.

Recommendations from community and suggested actions Recommendations include 100 percent stipend, sensitization of parents about the need for education and criteria of stipend, introduction of tiffin, supply of free stationeries, stopping of child labor, social mobilization, increased number of trained teachers, and effective home visits by teachers. Participation of local government, proactive SMC, training of SMC on role and responsibilities, strengthening of monitoring and supervision, award to meritorious students and improved teacher-parent-community relationship can also contribute a great deal to prevent drop out. Community also recommended for the iimprovement of infrastructure, and road communication, supply materials for children for games and sports, timely distribution of text books, and teachers resideing in or near the catchment. On the above recommendations actions suggested include gradual increase of coverage of stipend especially increasing the proportion in poverty prone areas, undertaking social mobilization program to increase awareness of parents in remote and hard to reach areas, increase inter-ministerial cooperation to minimize child labor by enforcing child labor laws, extending the ROSC program in high drop out areas, identifying poor infrastructure of school buildings and prioritize establishment of school buildings,

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external evaluation to assess the quality of teachers training, up gradation of teachers qualification at entry level, ensuring participation of local government, ensuring regular and timely attendance and departure of teachers, strengthening monitoring and supervision and building school-community-family partnership.

In view of the poor recording and documentation system at the school level the study strongly recommends that young teachers be provided with appropriate training to improve the system. Teachers should understand well how to keep record of enrollment, completion, repetition, drop out etc.

Actions needed to be taken at the central/policy level:

• Hold inter-ministerial meeting to decide how other ministries and non-government organizations can collaborate to target families of drop out children with development activities.

• Take joint inititative in collaboration with other relevant ministries to ensure the effective enforcement of Child Labor Laws.

• Increasing the proportion of stipend distribution in poverty prone areas should be given serious consideration.

• DPE investigate possible extension of the ROSC program activities to areas where child labor is more prevalent or drop out rate is very high.

• Expedite teacher recruitment process to fill up the vacant positions of teachers.

• Evaluate the current quality of teachers training, training application and teacher performance.

• Up-gradation of teachers qualification at entry level should be given serious consideration.

Actions needed to be taken at the local level:

• AUEO during their routine school visit can guide teachers how to maintain proper records of enrollment, completion, repetition and drop outs.

• Local school authority should review the SMC meeting minutes to assess what actions have been taken for the drop out children in each catchment area.

• Intervention of local administration and right based NGOs can prevent many of the early marriages.

• For ensuring academic supervision AUEOs should design the local level planning as to how monitoring and supervision can be made effective.

• School community should be encouraged to take some responsibilities of establishing or renovating school infrastructure such as reconstruction of an unusable latrine or repairing a tube well.

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Section 1: Background and Objectives 1.1 Background Primary Education being the basic foundation of formal education of all children, all-out efforts in the part of the government and society are needed to make any remarkable changes in the development of this sector of Bangladesh. Historically primary schools are suffering from lack of proper attention and these schools have always demonstrated low quality of teaching particularly in rural Bangladesh. Since independence deteriorating economic situation left most of the existing primary schools in vulnerable conditions compounded with the problems of necessary school facilities, shortage of properly trained teachers practicing traditional teaching methods and lack of support of community. The Bangladesh constitution enshrines the rights of basic education to all children. The State would thus (a) establish a uniform, mass-oriented and universal system of education and extend free and compulsory education to all children, (b) relate education to the needs of the society and produce properly trained and motivated citizens to serve those needs and (c) remove illiteracy within such time as may be determined by law. To abide by the constitutional obligation, Bangladesh has undertaken a number of measures to improve primary education and has become signatory to various international declarations including the Education for All (EFA) in 1990. In recent years, the Government of Bangladesh has implemented a number of projects to increase access of primary education for all school-aged children and to improve the quality of education. However, the school census 2005 reveals that the primary education dropout rate in both Government Primary Schools (GPS) as well as Registered Non-Government Primary Schools (RNGPS) has increased from 47.2% in 2005 to 50.5% in 2007. These results need further investigation. But the information provided by the school census data may be insufficient to estimate the dropout rate with accuracy. To this end, UNICEF will conduct the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS), which will have significant household research on primary school indicators and will investigate: primary school entry, net attendance ratio, completion rate, transition to secondary school, student movement from one school to another and drop out.

The MICS will not, however, sufficiently investigate drop out behaviors. Therefore, a specific participatory sample survey involving participatory research tools was felt necessary. The study was undertaken by RTM International on being commissioned by UNICEF during the period of March- June 2009. The survey focused on drop out children and their families and also captured the views of SMC and local government representatives on determinants and causes of primary school drop-out. 1.2 Objectives

The objectives of the study were as follows: • to provide basic determinants of dropout behavior in primary school; • to capture the root causes of primary school drop out; and • to capture school community’s views of remedial measures to drop out.

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Section 2: Methodology

2.1 Methods and techniques As the main purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the primary school dropout behaviors through participatory methods, the catchment areas of selected primary schools were visited to elicit the views of the community people. This survey for the convenience of identifying the high and low dropout catchment areas selected 25 schools with the technical assistance of the statistical cell of DPE. On reaching the selected schools, records were reviewed for identifying the names and addresses of drop out boys and girls who had left the catchment school during the last three years. Teachers were also interviewed as Key Informants. The following methods and techniques were followed to collect data from various groups of participants: Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) were conducted with parents (with male and female separately) applying PRA methods and tools. Focused Group Discussions (FGDs) were also conducted with the members of the School Management Committee (SMC). Key Informants Interview (KII): Key informant interviews of school teachers in all selected schools were conducted. In-depth Interview: In-depth interviews were conducted with the local government representatives In-depth Interview: In-depth interviews were conducted with parents of dropout children. Case Studies: Case studies were conducted with selected drop out children. 2.2 Sample coverage

To diversify the sampling areas by ecological zone rather than on the basis of administrative divisions the study visited 25 sites (17 rural and 8 urban). This also included 2 rural and 2 urban schools with low drop-out records. Records on drop out were provided by DPE. Certain criteria were followed for school selection. To capture the geographical diversity, the remote and inaccessible zones with reported high drop out rates, low completion rates and low literacy rate were given special attention in the selection process. The reverse criteria were followed for selection of catchment areas with low drop out. In each site one FGD each with parents, SMC, two teachers and two parents, and two local government representatives optimizing the gender balance were interviewed. In addition, 12 case studies of boys and girls all over the country were conducted. The following table shows the distribution of sample in the study by various group of participants:

Distribution of sample coverage by division and rural-urban level

No. of School

High drop-out PRA/FGD In-depth Interview Case Study

Division

Rural Urban Low drop-

out Parents SMC Parents Teachers Local Govt.

representative Boy Girl

Barisal 1 1 2 2 4 4 4 1 1 Chittagong 4 1 1 6 6 12 12 12 1 1 Dhaka 4 1 1 6 6 12 12 12 1 1 Khulna 1 1 2 4 4 8 8 8 1 1 Rajshahi 3 1 4 4 8 8 8 1 1 Sylhet 2 1 3 3 6 6 6 1 1 Total 15 6 4 25 25 50 50 50 6 6

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In addition to all these the study also interviewed 25 drop out boys and girls to ascertain their reasons for school drop out. Some of the tools used for data collection

Parents score the causes of drop-out during FGD.

Parents score the causes of drop-out for boys and girls separately during FGD.

A list of study team members who collected data from the field is in Annex A. 2.3 Limitations of the study This study being qualitative has several limitations. The sample size and areas are not representative of the country because the emphasis was more on geographical diversity rather than on regional representation. The study purposefully selected more high drop out areas to understand the nature of the problem intensively. However, knowledge and results produced should be used to draw insights and not generalized. Some responses from FGD and interviews are combined to scale the importance of a specific response to understand the perception. So, these should not be considered as quantitative predictions or trend. Proprotion or percentages used are likely to be unique to the relative few people and specific geographical locations. Poverty Before interpreting the findings it must be understood that poverty has been rated as the number one reason for drop out for various reasons. One methodological reason is that more sample were drawn from remote and poverty prone areas. They were also high drop out areas and the study findings suggest that even in relatively better economic region, drop out boys and girls are from poor families. The selected study participants especially parents and boys and girls were mostly from poor families. Poor people tend to instantly cite and relate poverty as the main reason for their children’s failure to continue school. Poverty, however, should be treated as an overarching reason and should not be read in isolation because all other causes at the demand side including cost of education, child labor, migration etc. are the results of poverty. It is possibile that the results would have been different provided sample were regionally more representative cannot be undermined.

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4

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The School Profile

In each school catchments area the research team visited the school to collect some relevant information including the names and addresses of children who dropped out during the last three years. School document were checked and necessary information were recorded with the assistance of teachers. Concentration was given only to collect that quantitative information which might meet be useful for investigation and analysis purposes. Some of this information may be insightful and as such have been presented below with comparison of national data wherever possible: Issues Present findings National baseline

data 2005 • Number of sample schools Rural: 17 Urban: 08 Total: 25

NA

• Number of students Boys: 3074 Girls: 3254 Ratio 49:51

NA

• Number of teachers: Male: 57 Female: 63 Ratio 48:52 NA Teacher Student Ratio 1:53 1:58

• Average student per classroom

62 (lowest 20, highest 163) 68 (lowest 24, highest 200)

• Teacher having C-in-Ed training

Average: 86% Male: 88% Female: 83%

Average: 71.9% Male:74.8%, Female: 67.2%

• Shift in the school Single: 08% (02 schools) Double:92% ( 23 schools

Single: 12% Double: 88%

• Number of classroom 3 schools: 01 room

2 schools: 02 rooms

9 schools: 03 rooms

11 schools: more than

3 rooms

NA

• Number of tube wells Working: 56% (14 schools) Non- working:44% ( 11 schools)

Working: 56% Non-working 44%

• Toilets 84% usable 8% not usable 8% no toilet 9% no toilet • Separate toilets for girls Yes: 36% (9 schools) No:64% (16 schools) Yes: 37% No: 63%

• No of Schools getting stipend facility:

17 (Out of 25 schools, 8 is located in urban area)

NA

Average rate of 5-year cycle completion (without considering repetition, transfer and migration)

24% in 2006 20% in 2007 20% in 2008

Survival rate: 52.9%

• 5-year cycle completion rate (only enrolled and 5-yeare cycle completers are considered here)

Urban: 27% in 2006 23% in 2007 25% in 2008

Rural: 15% in 2006 13% in 2007 15% in 2008

High performing: 53% in 2006 43% in 2007 40% in 2008

NA

• Scholarship obtained 14% in 2006 25% in 2007 13% in2008 NA

• No of repeater (in 25 schools):

Over all repetition rate is 11.2% Repetition of boys is higher than girls. Repetition rate is highest in class I

Classes Year 1 2 3 4 5

boys girls boys girls boys girls boys girls boys girls 153 166 117 124 89 96 120 60 31 12 2006 180 189 106 99 109 114 68 66 28 13 2007 163 181 111 95 71 77 55 57 6 8 2008

Total repeaters: Boys: 1407, Girls:1357, repetition of boys is more than girls. Repetition rate is highest in class I

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Section 3: Literature Review Despite serious challenges of over population and widespread poverty, Bangladesh's primary education sector stands out as one of the biggest primary education management systems in the world. To bring an effective change in the field of primary education the government of Bangladesh took various measures to improve the primary education program in the light of constitutional obligation as well as international commitment. Since late nineties a noticeable increase of public sector resources along with external flow of fund has caused a tremendous progress in primary education sub-sector of Bangladesh. Although available data and reports on primary education sector show an increase in enrolment and completion rate, huge number of children put into the schooling process could not come out with desired level of achievement. The large number of dropouts from the system has created big gap between enrolment and completion rate. Besides repetition in different grades not only contribute to drop out of children from the system but also indicate poor quality of achievement. Again the quality of school performance is affected by various factors like lack of adequate infrastructure and attractive teaching learning environment, lack of appropriate teaching materials, shortage of trained teachers, high teacher student ratio and crowded classrooms, irregular attendance of teachers, lack of supervision and monitoring, lack of community participation and the passive role of SMCs.

The development trend of primary education as revealed from different surveys and study reports reflect tremendous growth in access and gender equity during the last two decades. Primary Education Statistics in Bangladesh-2001 published by DPE reveals that gross enrolment rate (GER) of boys and girls started showing a reverse trend since 1998 where enrollment of girls exceeded that of boys. This trend of higher enrolment of girls has been persisting as evidenced also by the baseline survey (DPE, 2005) showing 91.2% GER for boys as against 96.2% for girls where the total was 93.7. The overall NER was found to be 87.2% for boys and 90.1% for girls at national level. Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transition and Equity (CREATE) also evidenced that both Gross Enrollment Rate (GER) and Net Enrolment Rate (NER) for girls was higher than boys. The Annual Sector Performance Report (ASPR)-2009 of DPE also evidenced a positive trend in GER from

93.7

87.2

97.7

90.9

98.8

91.1

97.6 97.6

80

85

90

95

100

2005 2006 2007 2008

Trends of GER & NER

GER NER

93.7% in 2005 to 97.65% in 2008. The Net Enrollment 87.2% in 2005 increased to 90.8% in 2008 with gender parity. PROG3 a concept paper on achievements prepared by DPE in 2009 on major performance indicators recorded GER of 97.9% in 2008 which is close to target of 98% in 2009 where boys still lagging behind girls. In case of NER it shows an increase to 90.8% in 2008 from 87.2% in 2005. The present qualitative study,“ Participatory Evaluation: Causes of Primary School Drop Out” sponsored by UNICEF and conducted by RTM International did not intend to investigate enrollment trend but boys and girls ratio of 49:51 recorded from school document

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also indicate that there are more girls than boys in the school which is consistent with other findings.

Primary education statistics (2001) revealed that more than 98% school age children though enrolling in primary level schools in the country failed to complete the cycle of primary education. The completion rate of 40.7% in 1991 increased to 67% in 2001.The drop out rate also started decreasing from 1991 from 59% to 33% in 2001. In the CREATE study the average drop out rate was 15% in each grade, which after showing a sharp reduction in 1998 started increasing, and in 2004 average grade wise drop out was 12%. The cohort drop out rate recorded in the report was 60% in 1991, 53.30% in 1996 and 48% in 2004. The same report showed the survival rate at 55.5% in 1996 and 53.5% in 2005. According to the baseline survey 2005 the completion rate is 52.1% and ASPR revealed the completion rate is 50.7%. BBS-UNICEF Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS)-2006 report documented that overall completion rate is 46.7% and girls are slightly ahead of boys (52% vs 41.5 %). On the other hand completion rate also shows a negative trend which was targeted to be 55% from baseline of 52% (PROG 3). Data from different sources also indicate that enrollment rate and completion rate are revolving around 90% and 50% respectively. ASPR-2009 of DPE also indicated a stagnant drop out trend. The latest data on completion rate with respect to enrolment is quite unsatisfactory at national level and data for 2007 also indicate no improvement on baseline rates of drop out of 2005 (PROG3). RTM study from the school record of enrollment and graduation shows a huge gap. Although this observation is not based on cohort analysis, as we have not considered repetition, migration and transfer. However, compared to the level of enrollment in 2002, 2003 and 2004, the relative graduation rates in 2006, 2007 and 2008 were respectively 24%, 20% and 20% indicating that there is large number of repeaters as well as drop out in the system.

52.1

49.5 49.5

50.7

48

49

50

51

52

53

2005 2006 2007 2008

Completion Rate

DPE baseline survey in 2005 found that the repetition rate all over the country was 11.2% which was higher for boys (11.5%) than for girls (10.9). The overall survival rates 52.9% also had similar gender trend (boys 49% and girls 56.9%) showing girls have been performing better. As per MICS 2006 repetition rate were found to be in the range of only 2.5-2.7% at all grades except for grade 1(9.4%). Drop out rate did not exceed 2.7% at any grade. MICS study also shows that drop out of students was higher in grade 3 and 4 and repetition was higher in grade 1.

RTM study also recorded that drop out was higher in grade 3 and 4 and consistently repetition was also higher in grade 1. This study shows that of the total number of 2764 repeaters from grade one to grade five during 2006-2008 in the 25 schools, there were more boys (1407) than girls (1357).

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12.311.5

11.911.3 11 10.7

11.2 11

13.713.8

14.9 14.5

11.4

1314.4

13.7

5.75.6

2.2

5.2

02468

10121416

Grade 1 Grade 2 Grade 3 Grade 4 Grade 5

Repetition Rate

2005 2006 2007 2008

12.913.914.4 13.2

8.810.2 10.1

8.8

13.412.712.7

9

1618

14.616.7

0

5

10

15

20

Grade 1 Grade 2 grade 3 Grade 4

Drop-out Rate

2005 2006 2007 2008

Sources of all graphs: ASPR 2009

The 2001 education statistics show a male female ratio of teachers 62.4: 37.6. There has been more recruitment of female teachers and the gender gap has gradually been reduced. This study however, surprisingly, found the male female teacher ratio of 48:52 showing more female teachers in the visited 25 schools. The increased male female ratio of teachers is believed to have influenced the increased enrolment and retention of female students. There were 21.1% female teachers in 1991 which has increased to 37.6% in 2001. There was also some improvement in teacher-student ratio to be 1:63.This national level scenario may not be the same in all areas of Bangladesh and there are differences of such quantitative achievements in rural and urban schools. Teacher student ratio also reflects positive trend which was 54 in 2005 now showed 1:50 as per ASPR and yet to catch the target of 1:46. From the school record the current study has found a teacher student ratio of 1:53 which is consistent with other findings. The average number of students in class-room of GPS was about 68 which also goes close to the study findings where it is 62. The student-class room ratio at Upazila level varies from as small as 24 to as high as 200 children per class room. The study also evidenced a range of 20-163 student-classrooms with wide variation among different geographical locations. The baseline survey found 73% of all teachers reported initial C-in –Ed training (76 males and 69% females). This study has recorded that 86 % teachers have received C-in Ed training showing a rising trend of training coverage. Of them 88 percent were male and 83% female.

The baseline survey reported 32% GPS having separate toilets for boys and 37% separate toilets for girls. Though 62% reported to have common toilets but about 9% of total GPS reported they had no toilets in schools. This study found 8% schools having no toilet and 56 % of the schools having common toilet. The baseline survey findings also match exactly with this study findings where in 44 % school we found the tube well in non-working condition. Out of 25 schools visited 2 schools were running single shift which is 8 percent as against the national average of 9 percent.

In Bangladesh very few qualitative studies have investigated the causes of drop out. A report titled “Listening to poor people’s realities” about primary health care and primary education published by SIDA documented some factors that contribute to the drop out. Some the findings match with the current study findings and reinforce the views of the community. In some areas the reality check has related primary education to parents lack of motivation, economic condition, child labor, cost of education, stipend coverage, teacher shortage, need for private tutor, student teacher ratios, teacher’s training, effects of SMC, school infrastructure, location, student beating, parents education, poor record keeping system etc. For example the study evidenced the loss of stipend for exam failure and subsequent drop out of child. The reality check also found communities to expand the stipend coverage to 80% and alternative suggestion to include stationeries instead of stipend money. Inaccuracy in record was also observed regarding the estimation of drop out as “some children who attend only for a few days after enrollment are dropped from the school register and are thus not recorded as drop out.” The present study found record keeping as a serious problem. A teacher at a rural government primary school say, as reported in the report “there are lots of corruption in transfer and posting as people always want to be transferred near their homes.”

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Section 4: Basic determinants of dropout behavior The study has attempted to analyze data on the basis of the two primary objectives of identifying the basic determinants and capture the root causes of primary school drop out. In fact it was difficult for the study participants most of whom belong to the rural and urban poverty groups to distinguish between the causes and determinants. They tried to relate their responses directly or indirectly to drop out without specifying whether it was a determinant or a cause. The responsibility of making the distinction fell on the research team which has to admit that determinants and causes are so closely interrelated that sometimes it is difficult to isolate one from the other. For example, poverty may be a root cause as well as a basic determinant of drop out behavior. Keeping these limitations in mind and on the basis of responses and observations of socio-economic and geo-physical conditions of the places visited, the following graph indicate the ranking of responses on determinants of drop out behavior as perceived by the participants:

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Economic condition

Availabilty of child employment

Shortage of teacher/ attendence

Accessibility

School stipend

Infrastrucral problem

Local environment

Role of SM C

Others

Major determinants of drop-out

Before discussing the determinants it is considered worthwhile to discuss the problem at school level about the understanding of the definition of drop out. The problem relates to poor record keeping at school level that makes ascertaining the actual drop out diffcult. 4.1 The problem of definition and documentation Although there may be difference of opinion regarding the definition of drop out, the study has defined drop out as students who were ever enrolled in any grade in the system but are currently out of school for more than six months and have not completed the primary school cycle. The time period of six month was considered for the interest of the study to identify drop out children in the sample areas for interview. It must be reminded that UNESCO defines dropout as “pupil and student who leaves school definitively in a given school year” Discussion with teachers in many locations revealed that they were not uniformly clear about the definition of drop out and were gradually learning to understand it. As one headmaster put it, “Earlier we used to perceive migration as drop out. For this our school had reported a higher drop out in the past. We don’t count them as drop out any more and our drop out rate is now coming down.” Very few schools could however produce any evidence of keeping track of any child with urban-rural or rural-urban migration that could be a supportive evidence of a child’s continuation in another school of his/her place of migration. This is an impossible task for the school and remains a great challenge to estimating the actual drop out of primary school children.

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It is important to note that almost all the schools with reported high drop out, teachers tend to hide the fact insisting that some of the enrolled students had left for other schools or most of them were repeaters. But a thorough review of records and counting of students by class gives a grim picture. Surprisingly some of the schools with reportedly low dropout rate as well as most of those with reportedly high drop out rate, there is a unique resemblance of a wide gap between enrollment and completion. About 50% of the schools visited during the study could produce some records of drop outs and repeaters while the remaining schools had either no record or those were anomalous and inconsistent. School records also indicated that the rate of primary graduation was about a half of the actual enrolment for successive years. Record keeping system is not appropriate and in a few cases previous year’s enrollment record was not available. There is a culture of blaming previous Head Teacher (HT) saying, “He did not maintain the records properly”. It has also been noticed in some cases that HT is not capable enough to calculate the numbers of repeaters. During the visit of the study team in a north eastern location it was found that almost cent percent students were repeaters in grade IV. HT could not provide its proper explanation. HT also calculated migrated children as drop out. Head teachers in some schools claimed that actual drop out of students might not be as high as reported or recorded from various sources. Many students enrolled in primary school may be out of the school as they were enrolled in class 1 but not necessarily out of the education system. Some of them reportedly had left for other “bhalo school” (better school) or for “madrasa” or for NGO schools. This is mostly true for urban, peri-urban, and locations with good road communication network. But in remote and inaccessible locations where it is hard to find any alternative the reported drop out problem is a genuine one.

4.2 Economic condition

Drop out of school children is higher in rural areas where most people (approximately 80% live below the poverty line as reported by participants in char, haor, and coastal island and hill tract areas) are poor and landless. Economic condition of the people, their occupation, land ownership, agriculture and cropping pattern and production, earning opportunities etc. combine to contribute to the failure of retention of children enrolled in primary school. As FGD participants in a hoar area said, “This is a mono crop area. We have no land. Six months we have no work when everything is submerged by water. Our primary thinking is our livelihood and not education.” Three-fifths of the teachers interviewed reported that most of the earning members of the families of drop out children are day laborers. Almost all SMC participants in their FGD in high drop out school catchment areas stated that majority of the parents of the students of the school are day laborers/agricultural labor. Teachers in a north eastern location said, “Economic force also pushes poor families to migrate to the urban areas looking for job or better earning opportunities.” In the reported high dropout of several urban schools, it is evidenced from FGD with SMC that people in catchment area are mostly from the poorest section of the community. In Dhaka city, it was reported by one HT of a high drop out school that “ floating and slum population move from one part of the city to another and it is difficult for the school to keep track of the children where they have moved”. So, economic condition of the families whether living in rural or urban is an important determinant of drop out behavior. Economic condition of the families equally affects the education of both boys and girls.

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4.3 Availability of child employment SMC participants in a southwest location said, “Parents use their children as tools for earning”. Teachers

in both rural and urban locations reported, “children are used as seasonal labor during harvesting season.” Parents in FGD also reported that “all members of the family including the girls are engaged in harvesting work.” Parents in a south east location said “children are used catching shrimp fries which continues for three months” by which families can earn handsome income in a short time. So, their long absence in the school and subsequent poor academic performance are believed to lead to drop. As one HT in one location in the south west said, “Illiterate parents fail to perceive that losses of class for two-three months may be damaging for the child and consider earning as a better trade off.” Parents and teachers at least in three locations

Drop-out boy thrashing paddy in other people's house to help family.

observed that girls from poor families get job easily in cities and towns as domestic help or in

garments industries. These working girls provide substantive financial support to the families and many families feel tempted to send their daughters to the cities even before completing the primary school.

Evidence from secondary sources reveals that in some rural areas with factories producing ‘bidi’, a large number of children both boys and girls are engaged as laborers. In urban areas small boys also have ample opportunity of work as domestic help, in tea stalls/shops, in public transport, as porter in ‘kutcha’ bazar in motor garage/workshops and also in numerous other areas including factories and

brick quarries. Urban parents in one FGD run businesses of shops/tea stalls engaging their son/ daughter as part time laborers after the school.

This boy dropped out to contribute extra income to his family.

4.4 Shortage of teacher/ skilled teacher and teacher attendance

4.4.1 Teacher vacancy

Teacher vacancy has been raised as a major problem which parents, SMC members and local government representatives consider to be responsible for the low out put of the school. In all the low drop out areas or even in urban areas vacancy of teacher was never reported as a problem. But this vacancy is a serious problem in some rural areas particularly in char and haor areas. As most of the schools are double shift schools a minimum of three teachers will be required at a time to take classes in grade 3, 4, and 5. With inadequate number of teachers, as teachers in many schools said, it was not possible to give enough time and attention to all classes. Academic performance of many students in those schools is likely to be unsatisfactory resulting in repetition and subsequent drop out. The study has evidenced at least three rural schools with only 2 teachers and one has as many as 265 students. All these are schools with high drop out rate.

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4.4.2 Teacher student ratio:

The present study reveals that the average ratio of teacher-student is 1:53. According to the DPE baseline survey 2005 it was 1:58. This indicates that the teacher-student ratio is declining. We have documented one urban and three rural schools with teacher student ratio respectively of 1:90, 1:133, 1:88, 1: 83, we also found two rural schools with the ratio of 1:26 and 1:31. High teacher-student ratio of many schools contributes to poor quality of education leading to drop When the class teacher remain absent or goes for leave rest of the teachers have to manage several classes at a time. A teacher in a peri-urban location said, “It is difficult to control large number of students.” In such situations, teachers in some other locations also admitted, it might not be possible to ensure quality education and drop out is highly likely. 4.4.3 Teacher attendance:

More than one-third of the study respondents cited teacher attendance as a problem area that influence drop out. The unique voice of the people in high drop out areas was “Teachers do not attend school regularly” (shikkhokra thikmoto class korena). Although SMCs in 13 out of 25 areas mentioned that teachers have been doing their job properly, in many rural and remote areas teacher attendance was an issue of concern. We have evidence from only one area that one teacher attends school from 30 km distance while another from 15 km distance. As one male participant in the North of the country said, “Teachers do not come to school regularly. Because they have to come from a long distance walking after crossing the river and they leave before the closing time without imparting their lesson. Children come to school and after making noise among themselves go back home.”(shikhokra niyomito school e ashena. Karon onek dur theke nodi par hoye tarpor hete school e ashte hoy tader. Abar school chhutir agei porashuna thik moto na koriye chole jay. Shishura school e eshe nijera hoi choi kore bare chole jaye). Irregular and untimely attendance of a teacher has negative impacts on learning environment. Without proper learning environment the learners do not get interest to attend school regularly and fail to attain the desired level of competencies. Teacher attendance was not reported as a problem in any of the urban schools. 4.4.4 Contact hours:

Parents in FGDs and interviews in many areas also a few SMCs had a common complaint that “Teachers come late and leave early”. This is a problem more in rural schools than urban schools. More than 90% schools run in double shift (staggered system). For single shift school contact hour is about 1.5 times higher than double shift schools. The children from single shift schools get more time to cover the syllabus whereas students of double shift schools do not get the opportunity of more contact hours. So present contact hours for double shift school is not sufficient enough to complete the syllabus in due time. Due to reduced contact hours teacher might not have enough time to conduct classes following proper steps. In urban schools there is little complaint about the contact hours. With reduced contact hours students are deprived of the due procedure and fail to learn the lesson. As a result students become slow learners that gradually drive them out of school. 4.4.5 Teacher’s training: Parents and local government representatives expressed their concern about the lack of skilled teachers and perceived that more skilled teachers would increase retention and reduce drop out. The study reveals that among the teacher respondents 86% received C-in-Ed training of which 88% were males and 83% females. 6% respondents have B. Ed training. 8% respondents did not get any training. Baseline survey 2005 revealed that 71.9% teachers had received C-in-Ed training of which 74.8% were male and 67.2% female. This shows that coverage of C-in-Ed training has increased. According to a considerable number of teachers, “it is very difficult to implement the

12


knowledge of training in the classroom. Because present classroom situation do not allow exercising properly the knowledge gathered through training. There are no adequate infrastructural facilities and teaching staff to teach as per instructions of the training.” Many teachers in their interview believed that contact hour was also a barrier for this as there was no gap among the classes in the existing class routine.

4.4.6 Teachers’ qualification:

Teacher’s qualification is also a factor to contribute to retention or influence drop out behavior. More than fifty percent of the study participants expressed concern about the quality of teacher and believe that more qualified teachers would reduce drop out. Parents usually perceive that “Teachers are not qualified, cannot teach properly” (Shikkokra bhalono, thikmoto paraita parena) but they are not capable to explain the many aspects of quality as an educational professional will do Interview of teachers in the study shows that 58% of the teachers had SSC (12%) and HSC (46%) level degree. Only 18% has masters’ degree and 24% had Bachelor degree. It was also revealed from the study that 52% Head Teachers were HSC passed. Head Teacher is the key person who is responsible to run school smoothly. Teachers in many schools have the common views that learning child psychology and modern teaching-learning technique teacher’s academic qualification is important.

4.4.7 Teaching learning environment:

Lack of child centered and child friendly teaching learning process and entertaining environment are likely to attract children to school and reduce drop out. Lack of entertainment facility might contribute to drop out as viewed by many teachers and local government representatives. About 8% parents of drop out children also identified lack of entertainment facility for students as a cause of drop out. According to them there is no arrangement of any kind of entertainment which attract the students towards school. Some teachers also viewed that lack of entertainment facility makes the education unfriendly. They also think that there is also a lack of learner friendly and need based curriculum. Sometimes defective evaluation system of competence level also might discourage students to come to school.

4.5 Private tutor/guide

Although parents or other participants did not say that any of the children had dropped out because there was no private tutor, but they indicated during their discussion on cost of education that paying for the private tutor was an additional cost. This rising trend of hiring a private tutor indicates an interesting social change in respect of the perception of parents. This change is not surprising. In almost all locations the use of private tutor was wide spread. FGD participants and interview respondents perceived this as a need for the better education and performance of the child. The rationales for the perceived need of engaging a private tutor are:

“When it is difficult to make both ends meet, how can I manage a private tutor”( nun ante panta furay private master khoi?)-a father in Sylhet Division

• Parents in most poor families are illiterate and cannot guide their children at home to

learn their lessons • Parents of economically solvent families hire private tutor and their children perform

better while children from poor families lag behind • Increased awareness of parents has induced a sense of competition to ensure that their

children do not fall behind

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• Teachers are not doing their job properly in the class and do not provide any attention to the slow learners

• There are not enough teachers in the school to give adequate attention • Some teachers are busy with private tuition and do not give adequate attention in the

class

It was evidenced from FGDs and interviews in most of study locations that many families both in urban or rural areas hired a private tutor without any gender discrimination of the child. It was reported that in rural areas hiring a private tutor with Tk 100 was a common practice. The tutor engaged was usually someone in the neighborhood with secondary or higher secondary graduation or a secondary school incomplete student who gave his service 6-7 days a week. Poor parents in most locations ascribed the lack of private tutor to be responsible for poor performance of the children that ultimately leads to school drop out. More than 90 percent of the drop out children interviewed in the study did not have a private tutor or guide. Most of the drops out children are first generation learners. So there is no one in the family to assist them in learning their lessons at home. As one drop out child in the South west of the country said, “If my parents could teach me or appoint a private tutor then I could continue my study “(Jodi Baba-Ma amake porie dite parto ba private dito tahle ami lekha pora korte partam). Poor families, however, cannot afford to appoint a private tutor. As a father said, “There was a real crisis of money, its hard to manage two bare meals, how can I appoint a private tutor” (Takar boro ovab chilo, nijera dumutho khete parina ,kivabe griho shikkhok rakhbo). When poor parents without a private tutor find that their children are not doing well, they decide to take them away from school and engage in work. One parent in a Northern district said, “Teachers do not teach properly for which the child cannot read alone at home. So a private tutor is needed.”(Shikkhokra thikmoto poraina tai shishu barite ehse eka porte parena A jonno private dorker.) 4.6 Teacher commitment and attitude

In all the good performing schools visited by the study team, community acknowledged that commitment of teachers, teaching staff especially the headmaster was responsible for the good performance of the school. The SMC chair in a low drop out school said, “Wherever the HT is found very committed, other teachers are encouraged and feel obligated to work better.” Attitude and behavior of the teachers is also very

Teacher exploiting child's poverty

“My name is Rupali. I live in a village of Khulnadivision. In my family I have my parents with a largefamily. We had to take loan of big amount of moneyto pay dowry for two of my elder sister’s marriage andfor this I could not continue my study. I dropped outfrom school when I was in class four. Now I am 13years old. I am responsible to take care one of myschool teacher’s baby during the school time. From 8to 2.30 pm I spend with her baby in the school yardand for this she gives me 100 taka per month withoutproviding food. My father used to tell me to go toschool but mother resisted which gave me lots of pain.”Rupali is not planning for further study while askingabout restarting her schooling. She said, “When I wasin school, I was regular. I liked to study. I didn’t getkhata, pen on time, and the teachers weredifferentiating between rich and poor. Often theypunished me rudely. I don’t want to go to school again.My younger sister who is 11 years old, doesn’t go toschool either and like me takes care of anotherteacher’s baby.”

14


important. Teachers are also sometimes insensitive to the psychology of the children. We have a boy in the South west of the country telling us, “I failed in two subjects in grade four, my number was 499. There are other boys who also failed and they were promoted to grade five but I was not given promotion as Madam used to sleep in the class and I protested. My mother came and requested earnestly but they did not listen. So, I was angry with the teachers and stopped going to school.”(Ami choturtho srenite 2 bisoye fail korechhilam. Number chhilo 499. aro onekei fail korechhilo tader ponchom srenite uthiychhe kintu amak uthayni karon madam chass e boshe ghumato ami protibad korechihilam. Amar ma eshe onek onurodh korechhilo kintu tara shoneni. Tai ami sikhok der sathe rag kore school bondho korechhi.”(A South western district).

4.7 Accessibility

More than one third of the study participants considered accessibility as a determinant of drop out of primary school children. In char and haor areas accessibility was graded as number 2 problems by the FGD participants while in another five locations it was graded as the sixth reason for drop out. Accessibility related to road and water communication for the catchment area children as well as for teachers or their supervisors coming from outside the catchment is a barrier to create conducive learning opportunities in the following ways:

• Small children who do not know how to swim are not encouraged by parents to attend school in the rainy season (a problem in char and haor areas).

• Teachers who are not locals dislike to be posted in inaccessible areas • Posts of teachers in some cases remain vacant for years. • Teachers living outside the catchments or in an upazilla headquarters do not attend

school 6 days a week • Teachers also come late and leave early with the schools getting a reduced contact hours

Shifting of school shattered the dream of Anarkali Anarkali lives in a small and remote village in asouthern district of the country, where only 23families live. The road communication is verypoor and in rainy season it becomes worse.When Anarkali was in class three, the school wasshifted from this village due to river erosion.Since then she could not go to school. Now theschool is almost 8 Km away from her village andbecause of the distance and bad communicationher poor father does not have the courage tosend her to school. As a promising student in her school, Anarkolicould not accept her fate to think that becauseof having no school in her village she had todiscontinue her education. Still she dreams anytime the teachers will come again to take classesand school will be reestablished. She feels thatwith her, her eight year old younger sister andthe other children will be deprived and theirfuture is going to be ruined in the same way.

Even some schools in the south become inaccessible because of the tidal water. In parts of the south-west region, water logging cause serious problem affecting the school building and the play grounds. In haor areas road communication remains submerged for nearly six months and boat is the only mode of transport for all. Hiring a boat for day along with the boatman is

very costly and is not affordable for many teachers to do so every day. Cheaper passenger carrying engine boats are usually time bound and traveling to distant char areas becomes difficult if the teacher is residing in the mainland. In some haor areas local community arranges for boat to carry children to school. But small children reading in class 1 and 2 are usually not encouraged by parents to attend for fear that they might be drowned. Those who are able to afford a boat continue coming to school. But those who are poor and are not able to afford a boat stop coming to school. So they lag behind the school lessons which they cannot make up leading to repetition and drop out.

A popular local saying quoted bysome of the female FGDparticipants regarding theaccessibility in haor areas: “Six months by boat and six monthson foot” (Choi mash naye, choi mash paye)

The mother of drop out child in haor area about the girl child’s not going to school during the seasonal flooding “During rainy season girls of class

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four five cannot go to school because they feel shy to wade across waist deep water”( Baira aiile fani uthigele four–fivor phurin schoolo jaito farena, khomor phani vangia schoolo jaite shormai) The problem of accessibilty affects the girls more than the boys because girls usually avoid long distance and feel shy to wade across the knee-deep water. An SMC member in a haor area said, "They (local people) have anxiety to send their children to school during the rainy season, because as you see the water comes very near to the school and it continues for a long time and the child and parents lose their interest for education". Discussion with the HT in the same location gives the same feeling “I have to attend the school from not a very far upazilla sadar from another district. It is quite difficult for me to attend the school properly during the rainy season because of rough weather and bad communication.” A villager in the haor area, however added, "If there is an opportunity of boat from the local government, then we can send our children to school in rainy season" Some of the remote char areas of the Jamuna and Padma basin have no road links with the mainland and remain unsupervised throughout the years. Due to river erosion the location of the school is often shifted to make it more inaccessible for children as well as teachers. Seasonal flooding in many chars also makes accessibility to school difficult for about 4 months. There are many such schools in the districts of Jamalpur, Gaibandha, Kurigram, Faridpur and Sirajgonj as reported by some teachers during the interview. Teachers do not want to be posted in these areas. Evidences from the field suggest that posts of teachers are never cent percent filled up in many schools of these inaccessible area.

• “Everytime river crossing is needed for going to school” ( shobshmoy nadi par hoye school jete hoi) -parents in North Bengal.

• “The road condition is not good so they don’t come to school. During rainy season these is knee-deep water, no vehicular transport moves in this place”( rasta bhalano tai schoole ashena. Barshar samoy hatu pariman kada thake, kono janbahan ekhane cholena)- a local government representative in a bordering district

• “The area remains submerged for three months, often there is knee-deep water in the classroom and in the midst of that classes of grade four and five are taken” ( tin mash elaka panite dube thake, kono kono shomoy classroome hatu parjanta pani thake, er majhei chaturta o pancham srenir class chale)- a teacher in Kishoregonj district.

Teachers cannot attend the school regularly during the rainy season for bad weather in both char and haor areas where boat is the only mode of transport. Students come and go back home as the teacher is not available. In course of time they lose their interest to come to school and eventually drop out. Seasonal attendance only during dry season result in poor lesson learning for which students lag behind and have to be victims of repetition. Thus after two or more repetitions they grow older than their classmates and feel shy to come to school. Besides, after repeating two or more classes they and their parents lose interest in education and children are engaged in income generating activities. So it is evident that accessibility is one of the leading determinants of dropping out of primary school children in many areas. “The problem of inaccessibility has been affecting about 20 percent schools in some regions” remarked one AUEO. 4.8 School stipend program

Everywhere there was a common consensus that school stipend program had tremendously influenced enrolment, attendance and retention. The stipend money also helped poor families to meet up the expenses of education of the child. Many parents even with low level of awareness sent their children to school with the

A female drop out student fromthe South, “As I was a repeater in thesame class they stopped my stipend forwhich father said,‘ you don’t have to go toschool then, go to madrasha, read Arabicand the Quran, that would be useful forhereafter” (ekee classe dui bar thakay upobrittibondho kore dese, babay bole ‘taile arschoole na giye madrashay jao, arbi-koranporo, porokaleo kam dibo)

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expectation of receiving the stipend money. As one school teacher observed, - “Boys and girls are attending school regularly in the expectation of getting stipend and are being attentive to their study”(Chatro chatrira upabritir taka paoar ashae niomito schoole ashe and porashunai monojogi hachhe). Parents in 15 out of 25 locations believed that not getting stipend was a reason for drop out of children. This opinion was endorsed by SMC participants in FGDs and parents, teachers, local government respondents in their interviews. As stipend is given to only 40% of the enrolled students, many deserving poor families do not get the stipend. Many parents with the expectation of getting stipend money enroll their children in school. If they fail to get the stipend, when the child is in class three or four they send them to work. Another head teacher said, “Those who are not receiving stipend money are irregular in attendance and in the long run drop out of school.” A villager in the South also reports, “I am poor, I am not getting, those who are harvesting 200 or 300 maunds of rice their children are getting stipend, we are not getting, that is why I got disappointed and am not sending the child to school any more”( aii garib, aii paina, jara duisho mon, tinshomon dhan pay tago polapan briti paye, amra paiina, er lai, rag kore aar schoole pathaina) Teachers in at least two schools opined that children from poor families deprived of stipend have negative psychological effect on the child because the deprived child cannot rationalize why someone else is getting the stipend and s/he is not.

Teachers in several schools viewed that retention of girls than boys is more influenced by stipend. Girls in the rural areas have little opportunity to work outside home but can help the family in doing the domestic chores. So they attend school to get the stipend as well as work at home. For boys who can work outside home easily leave the school if they were not getting the stipend. In urban areas the poor families who are not getting any stipend engage their children, girls or boys, in work. Girls get easy employment either as domestic help or in garments factories and boys also have other opportunities to work. A head teacher in an urban school in the South West: said “in areas where parents can afford to send their children to kindergarten never send their children to a primary school. As children from poor families only get enrolled here it is necessary to introduce stipend program in the urban areas”(Je shakal babamayer chele meyeder kindergartene poranur shamothyo acche tara santander primary schoole bharti karena, ekhane gorib chele meye pore tai, urban elakae upabritir babostya kora uchit) There is a confusion and lack of awareness among parents as to who would get the stipend. A parent in the North east said, “Parents are not aware about the rules of getting the stipend. They think once the child is enrolled it will get the stipend money. ”( Maa-bapp janena upabriti faor niom, tara monekhore schoole bachha barti korlei upabriti faoa jaibo) When children fail to get the stipend money while another neighbor gets it, parents feel jealous and often take their child out of school for this. It was reported by one local government representatives in the plain land in the North, “The stipend holders who fail in class I terminal exam enroll again in class I to continue to get the stipend money.” This tells us about inflated enrollment in grade 1 by re-enrolling the repeaters. An Assistant Teacher said that students who fail in senior classes also lose their stipend. Guardians take them out of school and enroll them in neighboring school in junior classes to get the stipend money.

Poor Infrastructure of a School in Char Area

4.9 Infrastructure

More than one-third of the study participants cited infrastructure as a problem for not attracting children to school. The study team found 3 schools that had only one room and two of them had no bench. One of these three schools had only tin roof on top and no wall. Students are used to sitting on the jute sheet on the dusty floor. None of these schools has separate room for teachers and teachers have to carry the important documents in their bag or keep them in a neighboring house requesting the

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household for careful preservation. One FGD participant in the central region said, “The school has only one class room and that too has no availability of bench.” (Schoole akti matro classroom tate abar bencher baboysta nai). Students are unlikely to stay for long without proper seating arrangement and fail to catch up their lessons properly. At one point they lose interest in the school. The size of the classrooms sometimes cannot accommodate the number of students especially in grade 1 and 2 and that affect the quality of learning. As one teacher in a peri-urban location said, “We have more than ninety students in grade one which is much more than the room can accommodate. The back benchers can hardly pay any attention and become poor performers. These boys and girls drop out in the long run.”

School Toilets - Two out of Three are unuseable

There are schools with broken doors and windows and in one school with old tin roof water seeps inside during rainy season. A teacher in this school said, “This causes disruption of study during class hours.” Out of the 25 schools visited 11 schools had no or non-functional tube well. Two schools had no and another two had unusable latrines. Seven schools had only one latrine used by boys, girls and the teachers. It was observed during school visit and also confirmed by teachers that in schools with two latrines one was solely used by teachers and kept under lock and key for that purpose while the other was used by boys and girls. Where there are only one or two latrines girls rarely use the latrine and in most cases go to the neighboring houses to take care of the natural necessity. Once girls leave the school for home for clearing their bowel, they usually do not come back. This practice of leaving school early make lesson learning difficult leading to drop out.

Student Assembly

Very few schools located in haor and char areas have play ground for the children and morning PT or line up is not usually held. In many places school buildings are still the old ones or are completely dilapidated which does not attract children.

• “Classrooms and benches are not adequate in the school” (schoole classroom o bench parjaptao noii)- a teacher in a central district.

• “There is no play ground for children in the school” (bacchader kheladhular kono math na)- SMC president in a south east district.

• “Our school has neither a latrine nor a tubewell”(amader schoole kono latrine o nai ba kono tubewell o nai) - an assistant teacher in a school of haor area.

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4.10 Local environment

Village Bazar with Market Access to the Poor

About 30 percent of the study participants considered that the local environment was not education friendly. These responses were more frequent in haor, char and coastal island and in urban slums. As the study team visited catchment areas of primary schools with both high and low drop out, it was reported by parents and SMC members in areas with better literacy that the level of awareness among the people was higher. The research teams observed that rural locations close to any growth centre with good road communication network, growing economic activities and businesses, availabilty of other academic institutions like kindergartens, pre-primary schools or classes, secondary schools and colleges, madrashas, seem to contribute to high enrolment and retention. A teacher in a low drop out school reported “local environment and schools with consistent good academic records have low drop out of children.” In such areas poverty is not the determinant factor but something else seems to be influencing people’s behavior. As HT in one such area where the school is not very far from the upazilla headquarters and has a good academic history mentioned, “There seems to be a silent competition among all to send their children to school and make them educated. Even the rickshaw pullers are not outside this competition. Poverty is not a factor.” In contrast to this teacher in one urban area stated “ even with availabilty of many schools and colleges, private schools and kindergartens, if the vast majority of the catchment population are from the poverty groups, environment can do little help.” Local environment also means that children in poor families do not have the environment at home which is friendly for the study. At least 30 percent of the study participants perceived this as a problem. A mother in the central urban location said, “Living in slum is harming the child’s education.” In areas where most parents are poor and illiterate they fail to assist their children in learning their lessons who then naturally cannot cope up with the other students and gradually lose interest in learning. 4.11 Role of SMC

A teacher in an urban area in the south, observed “Many SMC members here are in their position for long time and because of their personal preoccupations are indifferent towards the affairs. Again they are also not interested to resign from the post. Others do not dare say anything as they are influential.”(SMC er onek sodoshoi dirgho somoy jabot pode thake ebong backtigoto bastotar dorun kaj somporke udashin, abar pod charte o raji non, onnora sahosh kore kichhu bole na jehetu tara probhabshali”.

Parents in their FGDs in 19 out of 25 locations and 60% local government representatives said that the SMC was not doing anything to prevent drop out, the teachers in contrast to the parents in 18 locations reported that SMC was doing its job properly. It is interesting to note that HT in 7 schools reported that SMC was functional while 7 Assistant teachers in the same school reported the opposite. Parents in one location in the south west condemned the role of SMC saying “Many of the children work in the factory of the SMC chairperson, small and tiny children, he seems to be happy rather because he can make them work at lower rate” (Sobapoti saheber nijer factory te onekei kaj kore- pulapan gura gara, heito aro khushee mone hoy, kompoysay kam korate pare)

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Most of the SMC members in their FGD claimed that they had been playing their role to increase enrollment and prevent drop out. But no evidence in this regard was found from any other group. In some places, however, SMC members indicated that they should play better role in monitoring and supervision of school activities. No social recognition or perceived benefit of SMC members might be responsible for not playing any proactive role. A local government representative in a rural south west location observed, “SMC worked previously but they are now inactive may be because they are not getting any incentive or allowance. For this reason many remain absent” (Aage SMC kaj korto ekhon korena, sombhoboto kono bhata deya hoyna, ei karone oneke uposthit thakena). In a char area parents reported that it was the HT who decided who would be on the committee because parents in the catchment were mostly day laborers and illiterate.

While conducting FGDs it was found that in a few places SMC members were not aware of their roles and responsibilities. In many places they also acknowledged that they needed training to understand their role better. In all places visited usually two or at best three members of the SMC reported to have ever received any training. It is also interesting to note that some SMC members were not available at the FGDs even after the phone call of the chair indicating the level of relationship maintained among the members. The attendance of female members was very poor and those who attended hardly participated in the discussion. A Headmaster of a secondary school who was a member of the SMC remarked about the female SMC member “Since there has to be a female member in the SMC, she has been included” indicating her almost no participation in the discussion. It is interesting to note that in none of the SMCs there is more than one female member from the community. This as if is done only to comply with the government rule of keeping at least one female.

4. 12 Role of local government

It is surprising that irrespective geographical diversity, urban-rural locations, performance of the school, the role of local government representatives in the promotion or development of primary education in any form is almost non-existent. A vast majority of local government representatives perceive that they have little role to play as they are not in the SMC. Slightly less than a third of the local government representatives who were members of the SMC had not received any training on their role. Almost 90 percent of the female local government representatives interviewed were not aware of the role of SMC. This level of awareness was just reverse among their male counterparts as most of them had a reasonable level of such awareness. One female Union Parishad member when asked what role she played to prevent primary school drop out reacted “Women are neglected in the society. For this reason we are not called. The school authority does not call us and do not want our involvement.” The above statement suggests that the perception of prescribed role dominates over any self-motivated or pro-active role to work for the community. This is indicative of the lack of community ownership. All male respondents in their interview claimed to get themselves involved for the development of education and also for prevention of school drop out. This claim, however, can be unhesitatingly discarded as mothers and fathers of drop out children in their interview and FGDs almost universally reported that local government had not been playing any role whatsoever in relation to primary school. A vast majority of teachers were in line with the statement of parents. The teachers who were on the SMC however recognized the contribution of their colleagues in the SMC. A teacher in the North, however, said, “They are less interested in the affairs of education and as it is not profitable they don’t’ think in this regard.” ( Shikkhar baypare tader agroho kom and eta lavjonok noi bale tara a bishoye chinta korena) One female head teacher of a GPS in the South-west was very much

An elderly villager in the south about the role of local government:

“Wherever there is money and wheat, they are available. Where there is no money and no wheat, they are not there.”

(Ora zehane taha achhe, gom achhe ohane achhe. Zehane taha nai, gom nai, ohane ora ahena)

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against the involvement of the local government representatives in the SMC and in the affairs of the school, “Their involvement in SMC creates difficulties in running the school. They try to exert undue pressure and try to influence the teachers to do various types of work that will help them to get vote in the election. They never inquire about the performance of the school. They are only interested in activities where monetary benefit is involved.” The male representatives from the local government, however, claimed that they had been providing support in terms of repairing the tin roof, earth filling of school field, extending financial support during annual sports, ensuring that the poor children got the stipend money, and providing VGD cards to poor parents etc. Surprisingly there was no such response from the female representatives indicating their poor level of involvement in education development. • “It is not possible for the poor to get a sight of the counselor” (Counsillorer dekha paoa goriber pakkhe sambhabna)-

an urban mother in the South. • “Chairmen members have never taken any initiative” (Chairmen memberer pakkhe theke kakhano kuno uddoyag

nea hoini) - male and female participants in eight districts. • “Local government representatives are busy with the work of union parishad. They are not concerned about the neglected

or drop out boys and girls of the society. Because they think that they have no benefit here.”( Sthanio sarkarpratinidhira union parishader kaj neaii beshi bastyo thake. Samajer abohelit ba dropout chelemeyederke nie taderkuno chinta nei. Karan tara mone kare je ekhane kuno lav nei) -a headmaster in the North.

4.13 Corruption and mis-governance

Corruption and mis-governance are evidenced from various interviews and FGDs to be highly likely to affect the quality of education at school. Corruption and mis-governance are analyzed at three levels, at the community level by SMC, school level by the teachers, and at the level of AUEO and UEO. Many of the issues are interrelated and many things cannot be accomplished without the connivance of one another. The nature of corruption and mis-governance cover the areas related to:

• Irregular attendance of teachers • Late arrival and early departure of teachers • Dependence on para teacher • Selection and distribution of stipend money • Monitoring and supervision • Malfunctioning of SMC • Recording and reporting • Misappropriation of development fund • Private tuition

Parents in 16 out of 25 locations and SMC in 12 locations reported that teachers had not been doing their job properly. At least in 8 areas local government representatives had the same opinion. Almost all the schools with reported high drop out had this problem in common. Negligence in carrying out duty properly has been observed among the teachers mostly in remote rural areas like char, haor and hills. Teachers usually come late, leave early and also do not always work six working days. Although teacher attendance and working hours are much better in urban areas we have report from one SMC group in an urban school in the south west of the country, “One teacher comes from 30 kilometers distance and another two from 15 kilometers distance, and as such they never arrive on time” (ekjon shikkhok tirish kilometer ebong duijon shikkhok ponoro kilometer dur teke ashen, tai unara kokhono somoimoto ashenna).

SMC participants in the north-west of the country, “Teachers do not attend school regularly. They make the para teacher take classes. Community pay the salary. The female teacher shirks her duty very much. She attends school 7/8 days in month. Probably she has connection at the top level.”(shikkhokra niomito schoole ashena, para teacher diae class korai, beton communitior madhyme dei. Mahila shikhhok khubee fakibaj, mashe shat aat din schoole ashe, monehoi upore hat ache.”

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There were complaints about the process of selection and distribution of stipend money in almost all rural areas. HT in one urban school also believed that the distribution of stipend was not properly done. Parents both male and female in some areas said: “Teacher and SMC select recipients on the basis of their own choice. Although the stipend money should go to 40 percent of the poor, it is not distributed properly.”( Shikhhok o SMC onek jaigaia mukh dekhe, bechhe bechee thik koren kare upabriti deben. Upabriti challish bhag gorib chatro chatri derkey debar katha thakleo onek jaigai tikmoto dewa hoina.) The most serious reported dishonesty related to the selection and distribution is that in many areas a lump sum of taka 150-200 is taken in advance from the prospective recipients with the promise of awarding the stipend money. From others the money is extorted by exploiting that without that payment their children would not be selected for stipend. This is done in places by the SMC chairperson without the involvement of the HT. In other places the HT himself is involved (where the SMC chairman is illiterate or inactive) or is an accomplice where the lead role is being played by the SMC chair.

One Assistant Teacher in the south disclosed in confidence that the SMC chair was highly corrupt and took a commission of Tk.20 from each stipend recipient of the school before each installment of payment. Female participants in a North east district said, “Although the stipend money is supposed to be given after every three months, they cut portion of the money on different plea, in three months they deduct between Tk.100 and Tk. 200 (upabrtir tekha tin mash bade bade dewar katha thakleo, nanan suta dekhaia eksho taki duisho teka porjanto khitta rakhe”. Rural power structure plays an important role as poor people have little courage to raise their voice against this type of corruption where the majority of SMC members are from the landowners ‘talukder goshty’. Poor people fear that once they raise their voice they would be deprived of the sharecropping opportunities in their land on which many of the poor families depend for their livelihood. Any protest, many poor people believe, would also lead to dirty and complex factional politics in the village. In some schools the parents of the students alleged that their children were not getting stipend properly. Quick verification proved the authenticity of the allegation while there was also an element of some misunderstanding. Some schools were found to be raising various types of fund from the stipend money without any written document such as sports fund.

Corruption is also linked to the poor monitoring and supervision. The research teams have reports from few places that where teachers were not attending regularly they bribed their supervisor on monthly basis. One father in central peri-urban location reported, “The HT comes to school only two days a week. We have heard that he pays Tk. 1000 to the AUEO every month for not coming everyday.” Anecdotal evidence suggests that AUEO school visit form is available with the school teachers who sometimes fills the forms supposed to be filled by the AUEO themselves. So, the desired level of supervision is evidently absent and is reinforced by the statement of a few newly recruited young Assistant Teachers who confirmed that there was little academic supervision.

Two villagers during the transect walk in a bordering district disclosed “SMC and teachers are defalcating stipend money in many ways. Para teacher asked me to give 200 taka to get stipend for my child. As I denied, para teacher said my child will not get stipend and his name will be struck off the register. For this I had complained to SMC chairperson but he replied that this is the rule. If your child wants to get stipend you have to pay 200 taka.” When we talked to high school headmaster who is also an SMC member, he cited that they have consulted with the guardians and decided to take this money to repair windows and doors of the school. It should be mentioned that no sign of disrepair was observed during school visit. The villager added that, “Those students who are getting the stipend have to pay 30 taka to pay for the salary of para teacher. So we are paying 200 taka before getting stipend and then 30 taka from the stipend money for the para teacher.”

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Parent’s Separation affecting Child’s Education

Sohag lives in a village of Maymansingh district. He is 9 years old. He has one elder brother and one younger sister. His elder brother studies at Madrasha and the 4 years old sister studies at Moktob. Sohag left school after class II, 2 years back.

In one school in Sidr affected region, it was reported that Tk. 50,000 was received for school renovation but the SMC chair has hardly spent Tk. 10,000 and allegedly misappropriated the rest.

4.14 The family demography

Family demography or any change in the family demography sometimes may be a determinant or a direct cause of drop out of primary school children. Women in one FGD in the North east said, “Many parents have more than 6 or 7 children. In these families, if the elder one is a daughter she is usually engaged in taking care of the siblings and never go back to school.” In large poor families, as stated by SMC in the char areas, “There many mouths to

feed, boys of grade 3 or 4 are engaged in work to earn for the family. Daughters are also sent to work as domestic help or in garment factories. The study team interviewed one father from the central part of the country who had seven daughters and three of them were working as domestic help in different houses of Dhaka city.

Sohag said "my father is a poor van driver. His daily income is 100 taka only which he had to spend to arrange food for our family. When I was in class one, my mother went abroad for some extra income for the family. First one year she gave money for my study. But suddenly she stopped to make contact with us and also stopped giving us money.

Nine years old girl is helping her family in household work.

As my home environment was not good and my parents did not help me in my study I could not pass my examination and had to study one more year in the class one. For this reason the school authority dismissed my stipend. When I finished class one and started class two, I asked my father to give me some money for buying school uniform, khata and pen. But my father was not able to give me that money. At that time my mother also stopped sending us money. And my stipend money also stopped for repetition. I studied some days in class two, but when my note-pad was finished I stopped going to the school. My father wanted me to go to the school. He beat me for not going to the school without considering the need for my school expenses. I missed my mother; my father works so hard that he get no extra time for me. I wanted to see my parents together. I then could think of going back to school.”

SMC and parents in most rural locations mentioned that death/disability or prolonged illness of the male earning member of the poor families sometimes because the school going children to drop out as school children are bound to earn for the family. The participants also added that sometimes more than one marriage by father may push the child into a situation for which s/he does not find a healthy environment at home to study. Gradual bad performance in the school might lead to drop out. Another important demographic change is the divorce or desertion of many mothers who have no resource and engage their school going children at work. 4.15 Monitoring and supervision

One assistant teacher in the South west reported that “There is no academic supervision”. One of the key reasons for poor performance of primary education system is lack of monitoring and supervision as reported by some SMC members, local government representatives and also some assistant teachers. UEO is responsible for monitoring and supervising the primary schools in an upazilla who is assisted by a number of AUEOs. When asked about the poor condition of the

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monitoring, one UEO said “for the lack of adequate manpower and logistic we cannot monitor properly.” The AUEO has to supervise two to three folds the number of schools than his/her assigned cluster. There are vacant posts of AUEOs in some upazillas and most of those posted reside at the upazilla headquarters and not in the cluster. In remote upazillas the problem of supervision and monitoring is acute as per statement of the local government representatives. There is reported lack of support staff in UEO offices, and UEOs engage the AUEOs to do the office work. Regarding discrepancies in school record of drop an AUEO said, “This negligence exists because there is no fear of job loss among the government school teachers and monitoring officials”. He added that NGO schools were doing better because there was fear of job loss. The study participants and few supervisors believed that with better supervision and monitoring retention of children in school will definitely increase.

4.16 Other determinants

4.16.1 School tiffin

Although school tiffin is not directly related to drop out of children many parents and teachers perceive that lack of tiffin facilities influences performance and also full time attendance. In seven places out of 25 FGDs with parents, three of the female groups and four of the male groups asserted the need for tiffin facilities in the school. Teachers from 16 locations, SMC from 15 location and local government representatives from 11 locations also held the same opinion. They opined that availability of tiffin during school hours would contribute to the reduction of drop out. As one teacher observed, “the school time is from 8 in the morning to 3 in the afternoon. Many students come without anything in the stomach or eating only wet rice (panta bhat). As their home is away from the school, once they go home they do not come back It is difficult to retain them for such long hours from morning till late afternoon. Since most students are from poor families’ arrangement of tiffin would help them stay in the school for longer hours and also attend to lesson.” Parents in FGD and interview as well as SMC and local government representatives in a char area gave a similar feeling by saying that small children attended school from 9 in the morning to 12:30 in the afternoon. Most of them are from poor families who come to school in empty stomach cannot stay in the class for such long hours giving proper attention.

4.16.2 Parents teachers association (PTA)

Most of the parents in their interview cited that they did not know anything about PTA. Parents only in 2 out of 25 locations had heard about PTA and its meetings. They did not have any further knowledge about its role and activity. One female respondent said, “We have heard that there is a committee, they hold meetings, it is a matter of the ‘Talukders’ we are poor people, remain busy in our farm work” (shunsi committee ase, meeting kore, hia talukdarder bepar, amra gorib manush khet khamarer kaje besto thahi ). No more evidence of the existence or activities could be found. Lack of community participation and ownership of schools keep them away from any type of involvement. 4.16.3 Teachers beat students:

Beating of students by teachers might scare the child not to come to school and also develop a negative attitude among parents not to send their children to school. The present study reveals that about 13% parents and 4% SMC members were concerned about beating of students by teachers. Some dropped out children interviewed also raised the issue of beating as to the reason for not liking school. Of the 50 students interviewed 56% boys and 44 % girls reported that they were ever beaten in the class. According to them due to fear of punishment students start to remain absent from class and gradually become a slow learner to be affected in the long run to leave the school. Parents of drop out children from independent two areas identified this as one of the major issues and ranked it as the 6th reason for drop out.

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4.16.4 Para teacher:

In two schools in the study area two para teachers have been found. Para teachers are recruited by community when there is shortage of teacher. The initiative is appreciable in respect of community participation. However, para teachers are not qualified enough to teach all junior and senior classes. In some cases where there is a shortage of regular teacher para teacher becomes prominent. Para teachers are not trained, they don’t know how to create a joyful leaning environment and this influences children drop out. Anecdotal evidence from one study area suggests that teachers remain absent giving the responsibility to para teacher. Parents in catchment area of one school alleged that para teacher is being paid honorarium by the HT and also that the HT bribes the AUEO to agree that para teacher will take classes most of the days. Some parents of dropout children and also one villager reported that the honorarium of para teachers was met up through depriving the students from stipend. 4.16.5 Eve teasing

Parents in one urban location and SMC in two locations identified eve teasing as one the reasons for girls for leaving school suddenly. This was however, not reported as a problem in rural areas.

Eve teasing shattered a girl's dream My name is Pakhi. I am 13 years old. I studied up to class four in an urban GPS. Then I dropped out fromschool while studying in class five. Now I am helping my mother in house hold work. My father is a van puller and mother is housewife. I have one elder brother and one younger brother. 1 year back when I was studying in class five, some local “Matans” (hoodlum) used to tease me on my way toschool and used to stand on my way to frighten me. One day I saw land lord's son standing on my way with aknife on his hand so that I stopped to go to school and since that day I never went to school any more. My parents always requested me to go to school. They gave me all the things I required for study. They neverallowed me to work at home. They advised me to study but I couldn’t continue my school for the fear of thatmastaan. It was my ill fate not to be able to continue my schooling though the school environment was good. The teachersalso loved me very much as I was a bright student but failed to solve the problem like my family as the mastaanwas very influential with in the locality. I had a dream that one day I will be educated and remove all distress from my family but my dreams havevanished. I want to go to school again. When I see other children of my age going to school, I feel very bad.

4.16.6 Tendency towards religious education:

There is a conflict in understanding whether the tendency towards religious education will be treated as drop out or migration to other institutions. About 8% parents identified tendency towards religious education as cause of drop out. According to a portion of (4%) SMC members’ tendency to religious education caused drop out. About 8% of drop out children identified it as one of the causes of drop out. The same opinion came from 4% of the teachers interviewed. And in most of the cases this is happening in case of girls. After they complete grade two or three, parents of those girls think they have learnt a lot, now they should learn Arabic because without Arabic no one can earn the blessings Almighty Allah, “You have learnt a lot in the primary school. Now it is time to learn Arabic, because to go near God there is no alternative but to learn Arabic” (primaryte anek kichhu shikha hayechha akhon arbi shikha darker, karon allahke pete halle arbi chhara goti nai). After studying one or two years in madrasha students do not get interest. They return to

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primary school and get admitted in the previous class. After a few days when they realize that they are physically matured than their classmates, they feel shy and leave the school. It was understood from discussions with some school teachers that madrasha authority allows admission without a transfer certificate and also entices students to get admission there. Community people in few places said that the quality of education in madrasha was better than that of primary school. Some parents thought that in madrasha there was a scope of learning all compulsory subjects. In addition they would learn Arabic too. 4.17 Existence of pre-primary education Of the twenty-five primary schools visited, eight schools had the provision of pre-primary education. Incidentally three of them were low drop-out schools, while the remaining were high drop out schools. As the study did not intend to investigate the correlation between drop out and presence of pre-primary education, it is not possible to conclusively say that pre-primary education had any positive impact on retention. Because some of these schools with pre-primary classes had recorded high drop out rate. It may be noted that the attendance and other activities pre-primary classes were not well documented in most schools. An assistant teacher in the selected high drop out school however said that “For the pre-primary classes, the enrollment is better in class one and it is easier for the teacher to teach in class one.” 4.18 Flexible school timing Only from one location in the south east participants requested for flexible school timing. This indicates that community people are not aware of flexible school timing. As there has not been much reference to this school timing by the community it is not possible from the available data to say anything about the impact of flexible school timing on low dropout. 4.19 Performance determinants of high and low drop-out schools The study teams visited 25 schools in the country with high and low drop out records. An attempt was made to assess what made a high drop out school different from a low drop out one.

An SMC with a difference The study team during its visit evidenced a very successful and active SMC that may be a model formany other SMCs to follow. It seemed to the study team a very different SMC of the country anddocumentation of its activities is considered worthwhile for dissemination to the stakeholders. Theschool has a very good record of high enrollment, good retention, and cycle completion. The roleSMC plays greatly contribute to the success and good performance of the school. How a good functioning SMC could influence the quality of education of a school has been revealed from thevarious activities it performs. The members of the SMC have divided the catchment of the schoolamong themselves for overseeing the presence of the students in their respective delimited local area. Each of the SMC members visits the home of students and talks to parents regularly. Theymake the teachers take monthly examination, chapter wise examination and send examined scriptsand evaluated paper to parents. The SMC has made it obligatory for the teachers to pay specialattention to the weak students. It also has made the teachers follow a rule to organize mothergathering (maa shomabesh) regularly. One female member of the SMC is regularly teaching the poor students at her home personally indicating the high level of commitment of an SMC member. SMCmembers ensure that teachers make home visits to bring back the drop out children to school. If theteachers fail to bring back the drop out children to school, then the SMC members contact the parents individually and collectively and try to resolve the problem of the families locally. This SMCholds its meetings regularly and documents its minutes for review of progress in the next meetings.

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This was done by asking all groups some additional questions in low drop out schools and cachment areas. It has been evidenced that in spite of the similar socio-economic condition of the locality, infrastructure, communication network, accessibility, teacher availability and other physical facilities, the commitment of the HT, the active role of SMC can make a lot of difference in the overall performance of the school.

High drop out schools Low dropout schools

• HT is not committed • High level of commitment of HT • Low level of awareness and literacy of

local population • High level awareness and literacy of local

population • Lack of accountability of the teachers to

the local community • High accountability of teachers to the

local community • Chronic teacher vacancy • Teacher vacancy is rare

• SMC does not make any effort to fill up the teacher vacancy

• SMC is proactive to get the vacancies filled up

• Teachers are irregular in attendance, arrival and departure

• Teachers are regular in attendance, timely arrival and departure is the practice.

• Consistent bad record and performance of school for several years

• Established image of good education and record of obtaining scholarship.

• Accessibility of students and teachers for bad road communication, seasonal flooding, and natural disaster reduces actual number of school days that is not usually made up with local initiative.

• Number of actual school days is rarely lost.

• No extra classes for slow learners • Special initiatives in a few schools for slow learners were observed

• Teachers do not perform additional activities.

• Additional activities to sensitize parents by regular home visits, courtyard meetings, class wise parents meetings

• SMC meetings are not held regularly. • SMC meetings are held regularly. • Local influentials are not caring about

primary education. • Local influentials do care about primary

education. • Poor role of SMC and community people • Parents and SMC act like watchdog so

the school administration has to account for its activities

N.B. This is the general picture but small variation by geographical locations and schools is possible and exceptions should not be ruled out.

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Section 5: Root causes of Primary School Drop-out In the study the stakeholders identified poverty as the root cause of primary school dropout. The finding is not surprising in a country where more than 40 percent of the people live below poverty line. If we stick to the definition that people earning less than 2 US dollar a day are poor, ensuring three meals even for a family of four with this income is a great survival challenge. Drop outs occur as the poor families cannot afford to send their children to schools. The study also identified other causes of drop out such as cost of education, child labor, parent's perception, migration and early marriage which are either closely related to poverty or are off -shoots of poverty. Besides, some other causes were also identified which contributed to drop outs such as repetition and idiosyncratic child behavior like inattentiveness or reluctance of the child to learn. There may be a need to explain why most of the people have rated poverty as the number one reason for drop out. As mentioned in the section 2.2 the study selected certain remote, inaccessible and poverty prone areas with reported high drop out rates. As these were economically backward, poverty was wide spread in those areas. Even in the urban areas most of the children enrolled into GPS were from poor families. The study participants especially parents and drop out boys and girls were mostly from poor families and they instantly cited poverty as the number one reason. The response of the study participants citing poverty as the most important reason for drop outs should be interpreted from their perspective. They perceive poverty as the over arching reason. So, poverty should not be read in isolation of other causes as those are results of poverty. For example, a poor family at times is unable to pay the examination fees, or give school uniform to the child. There are times when a poor family may needs to engage a child in labor to earn for the family to feed all the family members properly. For reasons of poverty families also migrate and the child is deprived of the education. None of these circumstances are outside the range of poverty but are very much the results of poverty. As the participants indicated that everything that influenced the family decision or behavior regarding the child education is correlated with poverty, it came up as the overarching reason. These are the few main reasons why poverty has been seen on top of everything. It must also be noted that all drop out children are not stipend recipients. In poverty prone areas approximately 70-80 percent people live below the poverty line. Many deserving children of these families are not getting school stipend as the proportion of stipend distribution is fixed. Many of the families in those areas cannot bear the minimal education cost of their children. Even the stipend recipients who get only Tk.100 per month is nothing compared to the amount a child can earn per day by selling labor. This earning may range from Tk.1000-1200 plus three meals a day. So, a poor family is most likely to be tempted to send a child to work rather than to school. Because meeting basic needs of food security is the priority of most poverty stricken families than education. So, all roads ultimately lead to poverty and poverty becomes the leading cause of drop out. But it must be acknowledged that had the probe been conducted in statistically representative locations with proper regional representation the study findings would have been different. This section discusses the various causes of drop out which have been arranged in order of priority as perceived by the study participants. The major causes of drop out as mentioned by the participants are as under:

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0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Poverty

Child labour

Parent 's educat ion & percept ion

Early marriage

Caregiving of siblings

Cost of educat ion

Child behaviour/performance

M igrat ion

Repetit ion

M ajor causes of drop-out

5.1 Poverty

As a father in Pabna district said, “Its better to work in the field or work as laborer in another household than gaining little education. That will give some income to support the household expenses.”

Poverty dominates as the most important cause of drop out of children. The vast majority (82 percent) of study participants universally acknowledged that poverty of the family is the number one reason for drop out of primary school children. As one male participant from the south-west argued, “hardly boy or girl from the rich or middle class families drop out, they are all from the poor families”. Parents who are extremely poor or landless or marginal farmers need the support of their children either to assist them in work or by engaging them in employment to reduce the burden of feeding one more mouth and do some cash earning for the family. Even in schools where

drop out is low drop out children are from poorer families. Poverty is closely correlated with parents’ level of perception and awareness about the importance of education. Most poor parents, as reported by some SMC members and local government representatives, think earning was better than having primary education. Because primary graduates will not get suitable job which can meet up their family expenditure. How the socio-economic condition of parents’ contributes to dropping out can be explained as follows. If a student reading is

grade III to V is engaged in child labor can easily earn daily around Tk. 100. This contributes to his/her family to a great extent. An AUEO in the south reported during informal discussion that many primary school children had to leave school during the recent years because of price hike to earn money to meet the family expenses.

Poverty is in her very face.

(Samannya parashuna karar cheya jamita ba manusher barita kaj karle kichu aya haba jaa dia sangshar chalba.)

Parents in their FGDs in most of the locations feel that those who were poor usually fail to provide: • a learning environment at home as there is no separate

room for study

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• uniform and stationeries Dipa did not have the courage to attend

school with torn dresses • the periodical examination fees • kerosene oil to facilitate the child’s study at

night Fifteen years old Dipa studied up to grade IV and then dropped out of school, now working in a coil factory in a metropolitan city. She gets 1000 taka monthly from there and taking the responsibility of the entire family.

• a house tutor to guide the child’s learning • breakfast in the morning to the child going

to school in empty stomach

All these gradually contribute to turn the child to a slow learner and after a certain period when he/she fails in the terminal exam repeatedly parents engage them in household or income generating activities. Poor families engage their children to work in other households in the village and also send their children to work as domestic help to urban areas. The incidence to work as domestic help is higher among the girl children while boys are more engaged at the local level. Girls are also sent to work in garment factories with the expectation of more economic solvency for the family. Drop out among girls are reportedly less than among boys for poverty, because girls have limited opportunity to work outside to earn money.

Her father is a fisherman and mother is a housewife. She did not get any stipend from her school. As her father's income was not sufficient to run the large family, he failed to manage Dipa’s school uniform and other expenditures regularly. “If I went to the school with torn dress everybody would talk bad of me. That’s why I do not attend my school”. The financial conditions of families in the community she lives are not good and most of their children have been engaged in work. So she started to follow and working to lead a better life for herself and her family like others. “I don't want to study again. Now I get 1000 Taka monthly which will be increased when I will learn more work. Now sometimes I can eat my favorite food with my income, which I couldn’t do previously.”, Dipa replied when asked about restarting her study. She also expressed, “If there were stipend and lunch arranged by the school, many of the students may join the school again. Though I left my study but I want my brother and sister to continue their education. However, I will not join the school so that I can afford the expenses of their study.”

“My father is very poor. He can hardly afford to give us two meals a day. To assist my father in in bearing the burden, he got me engaged as a carpenter” (Baba khoobee garib, sangsare dui bela thikmoto bhat dite parena. Babake shayajo karte baba tar sange niye rajmistorir kajerhelperite diey deye) - a drop out student in an urban school in South-west. “After the death of my husband there was no earning member in the family so I stopped my son’s going to school and sent him to work” (Shami mara jaoar por sangshare ai korar moto keeu chilona tai cheler school bandha kare kaje pathiachi)- a mother in the North.

Poor families also migrate to urban areas and the study has recorded seasonal urban-rural migration during harvesting season to make some extra income. Families often engage the child to assist the family in their seasonal agriculture, fishing, catching shrimp fries or similar type of work which gives families additional income. “amaro ichcha kore onno maiyago lahan mui o pormu, sadh ase sadho nai sir. Gorib ghore jonmo eitai boro pap. Tar poreo mayere koisilam amare school

e dite, maye koy oto pora lehar kam nai amar loge kame jabi noy khabi ki- I too have the desire like other girls to study, have the desire but no ability Sir, to be born in a poor family is itself a disgrace. Even then I told my mother to send me back to school. Mother said, ‘you don’t’ have to study more, come with me to work or else what will you eat?” – a drop out girl in the South.

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5.2 Child labor

Ten years old boy running his own business.

Three-fifths of the study respondents rated child labor as the second important root cause of drop out of primary school children. One of the leading reasons why children drop out of school is their engagement in child labor. Poverty and child labor go together in most cases. Child labor broadly takes three forms- labor of necessity, labor of opportunity, and labor of choice. Parents

in 15 locations thought that child labor was one of the dominant reasons for drop out of primary school children. In two locations it was graded as the number one reason, in three locations as number two, in five locations as number three, in four locations number four and in one location as the number five reason for drop out. Poor families, when their children are in grade three or four, think that their children are grown up or eligible to work and send them for work. In some cases when children think their father/mother is not capable to bear family

expenditure, they leave school and engage themselves in income generating activities. A drop out boy in CHT revealed “there are eleven members in our family. As it is not possible for my father to earn the bread of 11 people alone I have to engage myself in work in a rubber garden” It has been reported by teachers in both urban and rural areas that easy opportunity to earn sometimes leads the families to decide to send children to work rather than to school. For example, in some rural areas boys are engaged in catching shrimp fries for about three months leaving their classes because this is an opportunity to earn good cash for the family. In some other places school children are usually engaged in work in harvesting season to earn some good extra income for the families and parents fail to perceive this as an academic loss. When they return to schools they find it difficult to catch up the lessons and then quit after their failure in the examination. The study has report in one urban primary school catchment area that many primary school drop out children (more than 60 as reported by the HT) had been working in the factory owned by the SMC chairperson.

Primary school children catching shrimp fries

To work as child labor boys are reportedly more employed as child labor than girls. In rural areas boys can work in the field, in tea shops, in brickfield or even pulling vans including many other areas of employment but girls have limited opportunity either to help mothers in cooking or taking care of the siblings or sometimes to be engaged as domestic help. In urban areas also girls are either employed as garment worker or as a domestic help and have little other employment opportunity. For this reason there are more drop out among boys than girls. Girls usually are not notorious or do not play truant and is believed to be more serious about their education than the boys. So the strong perception among all types of respondents was that there were more drop out among boys than girls. A boy in an urban area in the south, probably reluctant to become a child labor, expressed his dissapointment in the following way,“I don’t enjoy studying, mother is always nagging ‘children around are working. You too go. In my family of want money is needed” (pora bhalo lagena, ma er bokbok sobsomoy. “ashe pasher polara kam kore. Tui o ja. Amar obhaber songsare tahar dorkar.)

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Rahima’s effort to resume her school failed

Rahima lives in a village in a Northern district of the country. Two years back when Rahima was in class four she dropped out of her school where she loved to pass her enjoyable days.

“I won the first places in games in my school”, she proudly informed while introducing herself. She narrated her story, when she was asked about her past school life. She was the first child of five siblings. Rahima’s parents were very supportive while she had been studying in her school. They arranged for stationeries and exam fees even though they were very poor with a large family size.

She was very regular in school and got the stipend money regularly. She liked her study very much as her teachers loved and cared about her. Rahima’s bright educational career was ruined at the sudden illness of her father and as there was no other earning member in her family; she had to take the responsibility of her family. For this Rahima’s grand mother influenced her to leave school and sent her to Dhaka to work as domestic help.

She worked in Dhaka for 17 months. But as her mother got a job, Rahima returned home to take care of her siblings again. When asked about restarting her study, Rahima showed her willingness to get admitted to her school again. But she was very disappointed, when she went to the school along with her mother last January, 2009, the headmaster refused her saying that he was unable to provide the school stationeries as all of those were distributed by this time.

“If my sir was willing to arrangee for my admission or gave his extra effort to provide my books, my life would be changed, I would restart those enjoyable student life like my other friends.”, expressed Rahima in a very sad tone.

5.3 Parents education and perception

Nearly three-fifths of the study participants related poor education and perception of parents responsible to drop out of children. Parents lack of awareness and education was perceived as the second most important problem responsible for drop out of primary school children by parents in three locations but on the overall it has been rated as the third root cause of drop out. A local government representative in the south observed, “most of the time they are in the sea catching fish, they have no time to inquire about the children. They are unaware about education.”But there are many parents who understand the value of education well but cannot but compromise with poverty and economic necessity. A teacher in north had this feeling “Guardians are illiterate and lack awareness. They think when children grow a little older, engaging them in earning will mitigate the want in the family.” Parents, local government representatives and teachers in some areas had something different to say. They believed that the level of awareness was much better than what it was few years back. Inspite of the willingness and good level of awareness of parents, they failed to fulfill their wish because of extreme poverty. We have the feelings of a poor but conscious mother. A poor mother in the urban North regrets the drop out of her child for unavoidable reason, “I had hoped that my son would complete his education and do good a job. Solvency would come to the family. We would enjoy some happiness. But that did not happen. That aggrieved me much.” (Amar asha chilo, amar chele pora shuna kore bhalo chakri korbe. Shangshare shachhalata ashbe. Amra ekto shukh pabo kinto ta aar hoini.Tai khub Dukkho payechilam).

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Poverty leads to early marriage

It is important to observe that poverty and lack of awareness have a positive association but with exception in certain areas with high level of literacy and developed social environment. Parents themselves in many locations acknowledged that their lack of education and awareness was responsible for the drop out of their children to a great extent. It is however important to learn that parents do not discriminiate about girls and boys in sending them to school. But when there is an earning need it is the boys who are usually engaged in labor. So family need for earning sometimes supersedes the perceived need for education of the child. As a drop out boy in the North of the country said, “my mother used to buy me everything, stationeries and dresses and two taka everyday, but my father would by no means allow me to go to school, it was difficult for my father to run the shop alone, so I had to sit in the shop to assist him”(ma school e jabar jonno khata kolom boi jama sobi ditto ebong protidin dui taka kore ditto.kintu baba kichhutei school e jete ditto na.baba eka dokan chalate partona, babar sathe dokane boshte hoto.) “Early marriages influence child dropping out

school, especially as regards the girl child as it is perceived by parents that marrying off the girl is an escape route from poverty.” This common practice is very interrelated with Mina’s life.

5.4 Early marriage

Mina, thirteen years old girl, got admitted to Government Primacy School of a village of Kishoreganj district. As the village is at the bank of the river, other than in rainy season transportation is very difficult. Here the main source of earning is cultivation. Mina’s father is a poor farmer. He had to take loan for their daily expenditure. When she was 8 years old she got admitted to school. She went to school regularly by walking almost 1 ½ Km. she was good in study and also made good result in all classes. When she was in class four, her father suddenly became ill and their family’s suffering started from that time. As she did not have any elder siblings, she had to take the responsibility of their entire family. To repay the loan she had to work hard. She had to take care of her other siblings along with her ailing father. For this, in spite of her willingness, she discontinued her schooling. Although again she wanted to go to school for study and dreamed to be a teacher. But as her father wants her to get married because of her young age and her dowry will be less, he hoped. Following that circumstances, Mina’s only dream turned to be married to get rid of her poverty.

Although there was no disagreement among the research participants that early marriage has declined drastically. It does not exist in all geographical locations. However,, participants in some areas saw this as a major cause for drop out of primary school girls while in other areas it was not graded to be so important. Almost 50 percent of the study participants rated this as the number five cause of drop out. In some areas the guardians perceived early marriage as an important cause of primary school drop out. In some remote char areas, coastal island and conservative areas of the South east, and parts of North Bengal early marriage is more prevalent. It is positively associated with poverty, illiteracy, religiosity, and local culture. Drop out among girls as such in those areas are quite frequently caused by early marriage of the girls. Where the repetition rate is higher, most of the girls if they are repeaters,

physically grow bigger than other classmates and feel uneasy to attend school and parents think that

they are grown up enough to be given in marriage.

“As a rule girls of this area get married at early age so my father gave me in. For this reason I could not continue my school”(Ei alakar niomei khub choto boyoshe biye dey, tai amar baba amak biye diye dey. Biye diye deyar karone amar school bondho hoye gechhe)- a drop out girl of char area in the north

Teachers in a few locations viewed that there is also a custom of viewing girl child as burden/duty for the father and getting released from this burden/duty as early as possible is viewed as an act of piety among the god-fearing parents. So when the girl child reaches the age of 13-14 years the parents, specially poor and illiterate try to give her in marriage to get released from the duty. Some of the girl children had faster physically growth compared to their age. One parent said, “My daughter had grown quite big so we had decided to give her in marriage” (Meye boro hoye gechilo, tai biye dite hoieche). Some families, especially from the poverty groups prefer to marry their daughter off at early age with three types of perception, (i) the younger the girl, the lesser the

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dowry, (ii) younger girls attract better bridegroom and (iii) the girl might fall in love with any one and elope disgracing and dishonoring the family. Quick decision to marry a girl off is taken in cases where it is strongly felt that the bridegroom is very good and or also financially solvent. Families are concerned that they might not get any one so good later. As one of the mothers in the South west said, “We would not get such good proposal later” (eto bhalo sommondho pore paoa jabena). As primary school completion does not guarantee job for a girl, parents in some areas do not risk the future and wait for primary education completion. 5.5 Care giving of siblings/helping father

FGD with parents in nine locations and than a quarter of overall study participants believed that in large families in rural and urban areas with too many children, the elder ones are usually engaged to do the job of care giving of their younger siblings. So, in areas where fertility rate is high, this is a common practice and elder female child takes the responsibility of caregivers. In such large families boys are also expected to help the families by doing work with the father when the father cultivates land by sharecropping and cannot afford to hire a laborer. These children become drop out completely at the family decision or need. Parents of these families do not mind the child’s loss of education.

5.6 Cost of education

More than one fifth of the FGD participants thought that the cost of education was responsible for pushing children to leave school. Parents in 9 locations and parents and teachers in most of the locations opined that bearing the cost of education was very hard for families most of whom were from low income groups. The participants and respondents related the cost of education to their failure to: • provide examination fees on time • provide private tutor • provide adequate stationeries • provide uniform/dress • buy teacher prescribed guidebook

All poor boys and girls in the school were not stipend receipients. But they were to pay periodical examination fees which many poor families failed to do. Anecdotal evidence from one school boy suggested that he was not allowed to participate in the grade four final examination for his failure to pay the examination fees. For many families, parents said, it was difficult to pay Tk. 20 even. Some families also failed to give uniform and the boy or girl under pressure from school felt shy to go to school without uniform when others were wearing it.

Ainal dropped out for poverty and now running his own tea stall

My name is Ainal. I am 14 years old. In my family I have my parents and two brothers. My father is a rickshaw puller and my mother works as domestic help. 1 year back, when I was in class five, I left the school. This is because my parents could not run our family with their limited income. Their daily income is 80 to 100 taka, which is not sufficient for a family of five. So I had to leave the school and start helping my father for cultivation. Now I am doing small business (tea stall). On an average my daily income is 100 taka. My father had to take loan for the tea stall. I have to repay the loan from the income from my tea stall and also have to give money to my family. Though my mother is illiterate, when I was studying at school, every evening my mother used to tell me to study. When I left school my mother advised me not to give up the study. But my parents could not afford to buy khata, pen etc. for me. It was difficult for me to study without those things. I don’t want to go to school again. If I go back to school our family will be in trouble. We will not be able to get our food without my income. If the Government gives us khata and pens and also increase the stipend money then our sufferings will be less. Other children like me will not suffer and won’t leave school.

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The cost of education more affects the boys than girls. It is believed girls after their graduation from primary school are sure to get stipend in the secondary school which boys do not get. So boys from poor families have lower interest in education. When boys put pressure to meet the expenses for private tutor, dress, stationeries and examination fees etc. parents tend to stop them sending to school and send them for work.

“School did not attract me” 5.7 Child performance:

My name is Md. Rakibul Hassan. I am 12 years old. I studied up toclass four and then dropped out from school. Now I am working as acowboy. From this I get 1200 taka per month and also get food threetimes a day. I give this money to my parents. My father is a farmer. Mymother assists my father in farming. I left my school one year back. I like very much to watch movies andlisten to music. Whenever I get time I go to the nearby bazar where Ican watch movie by paying only 5 taka. I always loved to play truant. I started bunking class when, I wasin class three. My parents used to tell me to go to school. Even sometimesthey beat me for that. My father confined me in a room forthree days on two occasions to go back to school. But mymind was inclined to that bazar. I like to go to the Mazar and staythere overnight for listening song that attract me very much.

It is not always poverty or lack of awareness or cost of education or school performnace that get the child out from school. Parents in nine locations and one third of the teachers perceive that the idiosyncratic behavior of the child or his/her academic performance was responsible for his/her drop out. Such drop out cases may belong to any of the following categories:

• the ever reluctant I don’t like study. I never got the stipend money as my sister wasreceiving the same. I was not a good student either. My parents gave mekhata, pen, uniform, everything but the school didn’t attract me.

• the inattentive • the play truant • the ever dull • the spoilt(bad association) There are students who attend school but are reluctant to study. They would go to school with much reluctance and do not at all enjoy reading and consequently do not pass the examinations.

Another group is always inattentive and also do not enjoy reading. They are not relutant but lack the special effort needed may be because of lack of guidance. Parents in nearly a half of the locations identified inattentiveness in study as a major problem which contributes to drop out.

We have put the case study of the play truant in the box who loves the freedom of outside world. He has all the intelligence and ability to become a good student. Here the school probably has some role to play to bring such students back to school.

There are in every class some ever dull student. Teachers opine that even with extra effort their performance cannot be improved.

Some are influenced by friends and bad association as an urban drop out boy in the north says, “My friends would not go to school. They would vex me had I been to school and would put cigarette between my lips by force. they would take away my books and stationeries and would makeme sit with them on the river bank”(bondhubandhob jara chhilo tara school e jete ditona. Ami schoole gele tara amak birokto korto.jor kore cigerrate dhorate mukhe dito. Tara boi khata niye amak nodir pare boshaye rakhto).

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5.8 Migration Rural-urban migration of poor people is another factor which contributes to dropping out of primary school children. Nearly 80 percent of teachers and about one-sixth of parents called migration an important cause of primary school drop out. There is also urban-rural seasonal migration. Teachers said, when families migrate, they usually do not take any transfer certificate from the schools. If those willing to admit their children to school are not in the period of admission time the school going child is likely to discontinue its study. It is known that 28 February is the last date of primary enrollment. After February when they migrate to other districts their children are not enrolled again. After coming back home they again enroll in the class they had previously studied. It was reported by the HT of one urban school in the Central location that intra-city migration of floating population increases the drop out rate of many urban schools. Drop out of girl students is related to the pull factor that girls have better prospect of getting job in the garment factories. Many families migrate with the hope of getting the garment jobs. When a daughter completes grade III to IV, poor parents think that she is capable enough to work in the garments factory. Parents, school teachers, and SMC in one urban school in the South-west of the country reported that boys and girls studying in the school are from migrant laborer families who work in local, ‘chatals’ (rice mills stocking and parboiling rice). These families usually stay for 6-7 months and if they fail to manage better earning opportunities after the seasonal work go back to their rural home again. These groups are the major drop out groups in the urban areas and girls as well as boys are equally affected.

The repeater twins

Nasima and Hasina are twins. They were students of a GPS located in the south eastern part of the country in a school which is only 5 Km away from the Upazila headquarters. They studied up to class four. They were very much inattentive, naughty and didn’t like to study. Their mother tried a lot for their study. She even went to school with them and waited outside. There were some days when she left them in the school but as soon as she left, they came back to home. For their inattentiveness they failed in the exam and were asked to repeat in class four. For this double repetition they decided not to continue and dropped out from the school at the age of 12 years. As one the twins observed “Hetara chay aiin class four e duar thaki. Hetallai aayin schoolo jayina”

Although it was important to understand the trend of migration, the study needed quantitative data for that. The study has only responses that some children migrate to other schools or madrasha and also to urban areas. But it has been identified that few schools have records on the children who have migrated and so it is not possible to provide any trends on the basis of this qualitative data. 5.9 Repetition

Instead of going to school, Nasima and Hasina engaged to collect firewood and vegetable for their house. As they didn’t have any elder brother, they have to buy the grocery with this money their father provided. Sometimes they also had to assist their father in work. While asking about their school life, both of them recalled the punishment of their teachers in fear. They also mentioned that, they are now 13 years old but taller than their reported age; this is another reason why they are not going to the school.

Although parents in only two groups found a causal relation between repetition and drop out, nearly 90% of teachers interviewed rated this as an important root cause of drop out. The main factor that repetition contributes to dropping out is low learning achievement. Some children repeatedly fail and so stay in the same grade more than one or

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two years. Such repetition reduces the benefits of schooling and the lengthening of the school cycle of the children increases the ratio of drop-out. Thus after two or more repetitions they become older than their classmates and feel shy to come to school. Besides, after repeating two or more class they and their parents lose interest in education and they drop out and engage themselves in income generating activities. 5.10 Death/disability or sickness of earning member

FGD participants in a few locations and some of the drop out children reported the sudden death, disability, or prolonged illness of the lead earning member usually a male, are among the root causes of drop out of children in many rural and urban families. When there is a single male earning member, any death or disability of that individual causes not only disaster to the family but also in its earning and education. Mothers are then compelled to send small children to work in other places to reduce the number of feeding mouths. Mothers themselves go for work and cannot afford to send their children to school. As this happens among lower income group here is no urban rural differential or gender choice.

Father’s sudden disability changed Child's life Saleh is a child of an agriculture depending poor family. He lives in a small village of char area. When he was only 10 years old andwas studying in class three, his father became disabled due to a motorcycle accident. As his father was the only earning member, it becamedifficult to run the family. Saleh had to take the responsibility of the entire family and had to work hard for earning the daily expensesfor survival. His parent’s wants him not to remain illiterate as they are but they could not manage his educational expenses. For thiscruel reason Saleh had to work at his early age and could not continue his study.

On Saleh’s opinion, he enjoyed the school very much, though the environment of the school was not so good. The school had only the tinshade roof. There was no wall, door, window, chair, table and bench also. They had to sit by placing a jute mat on the floor. Sometimethey had to bring mats from their houses. The behavior of his teacher was also very cruel but despite of these limitations during theconversation, his eyes were full of tears. Saleh wants to go to the school again. He wished to play with his school friends, shared the joys.Saleh has a little request to us for provided his father a good job so that he could be rejoining the school again.

5.11 The voices of drop out children The study teams interviewed 50 drop-out boys and girls, 2 in each location, to ascertain their reasons for drop out from school. The trend of responses presented in the following chart shows that poverty is the number one reason for drop out.

Poverty

Care giving of siblings/household work

Educational expenses

Death or illness of earning member

Don’t like study

Repetition

River erosion

Slow learners, no stipend

Bad association

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5.12 A few anecdotal evidences

The evaluation during interaction with teachers has found a few things out that need to be brought to the notice of the authority for precaution and necessary action. These are anecdotal evidences and need to be interpreted carefully.

• An Assistant Teacher in a low drop out school with good primary school scholarship record informed that their decision to promote students to grade 5 depended on how many of the students would pass the primary school scholarship program. As the rule is that 40 percent of grade 5 students must appear in the scholarship examination, they only promoted those to cover the 40 percent appearance that would definitely pass in the scholarship program. This is done to keep the school image undamaged and not to become questionable to the community. But in the process the number of repeaters in grade four is likely to be very high.

• In one urban location the HT reported that some of the primary school children from

his school were enrolled in UCEP schools and were receiving vocational training. This double enrolment was however kept secret by the NGO as it needed to show adequate number of beneficiaries to draw donor fund. A teacher in the same urban area reported that many government high schools that started with grade three drew many of their good students whom they had developed and prepared with hard labor. This worked as a de-motivation for the teachers and he suggested that policy should be changed so that these types of high schools did not admit students before grade 6. They felt that their good students were moving out affecting their quality and scholarship attainment.

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Section 6: Remedial Measures During the study the participants were asked about their views and perception of remedial measures to be taken to reduce the number of drop-out students. Many of their views are very common and might be implantable with additional administrative effort, reorganization and coordination. There are however, recommendations, such as giving stipend money to 100 percent students, which all groups of participants unanimously recommended. This need will important policy level change as huge resource will be required. The teachers, SMC, parents and local government representatives made a number of recommendations and suggestions which we have noted and which they perceive will contribute to the prevention and reduction of primary school drop-out. Their views are listed below: 6.1 Perception of parents/community people

1) Stipend should be given to all (100%) 2) Communication(road) and infrastructure should be developed 3) Early marriage should be discouraged and parents should be sensitized 4) Monitoring and supervision should be increased to ensure attendance of teachers 5) Number of skilled teachers should be increased according to subject 6) Parents should be educated through adult education 7) Job opportunity should be created in remote areas. 8) Parents should be sensitized about the value of education through various mass

.awareness/sensitization programme 9) Parents should be made to understand the criteria of eligibility of getting stipend. 10) Family Planning should be promoted. 11) Initiatives should be taken to reduce the poverty of parents through creating job

opportunity. 6.2 Views of SMC

1) Number of skilled teachers should be increased according to subject. 2) Parents awareness should be increased 3) Training should be provided to SMC and teachers. 4) Stipend should be given to all (100%). 5) Tiffin should be given. 6) SMC should be more active. 7) Child labor should be restricted/eliminated 8) Monitoring and Supervision should be increased. 9) Communication (Road) and infrastructure should be developed. 10) Teachers should come to school regularly. 11) Other materials (pen, paper, dress) related to education should be provided free. 12) Early marriage should be discouraged. 13) People should be sensitized not to engage children into domestic work 14) Parent teacher relation should be strengthened 15) Teachers staying in catchment area should be ensured 16) Parents should be given ration through local government so that they will not engage

their child into child labor.

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6.3 Recommendations from teachers:

1) Stipend should be given to all. 2) Parents awareness should be increased. 3) Students should be awarded stipend according to merit. 4) Tiffin should be given. 5) Other materials (pen, paper, dress) related to education should be provided free. 6) Infrastructure should be improved. 7) SMC should be more dutiful 8) Local government should be more helpful to PE 9) Number of skilled teacher should be increased according to subject 10) Number VGD/VGF should be increased. 11) Home visit should be increased and regularized... 12) Training should be provided to teachers regularly. 13) Poor but meritorious students should be helped monetarily on recommendation of head

teacher. 14) Parents gathering should be held regularly. 15) Playing material should be made available at school. 16) Child labor should be restricted/eliminated 17) Supply of new books should be ensured at the beginning of the academic year 18) Early marriage should be discouraged.

6.4 Suggestions from local government representatives:

1) Parents should be sensitized about the importance of primary education through meetings/campaign.

2) Initiatives should be taken to reduce the poverty of parents through creating job opportunity.

3) Child labor should be restricted/eliminated 4) Early marriage should be discouraged 5) Stipend should be given to all (100%). 6) Other materials (pen, paper, dress) related to education should be provided free. 7) Initiatives should be taken to raise social awareness about the importance of primary

education through various communicative activities. 8) Infrastructure should be developed. 9) Tiffin should be provided. 10) Schools should be attractive to the students by supplying playing materials and improving

extra curriculum activities. 11) Open CD/VCD show and video game should be restricted 12) Family planning should be promoted. 13) School time should be fixed according to the need of the locality. 14) Number of skilled teacher should be increased according to subject. 15) Teachers should be given special facility in remote and hard to reach areas. 16) Teachers should stay close to the catchment area and attend school timely. 17) Monitoring and supervision from the UEO office should be intensified

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Section: 7 Discussions and Recommendations In recent years, the Government of Bangladesh has implemented a number of projects to increase access of primary education for all school-aged children and to improve the quality of education. As a result significant development has been observed in infrastructure and physical facilities, teacher recruitment and training, children enrollment etc. But the overall quality of primary education is not improving at the expected level. Study findings reveal that there are some factors like economic condition of the family, cost of education, parents’ illiteracy and lack of awareness, child labor, teacher vacancy, teacher attendance, passive role of SMC, school infrastructure, accessibility and weak supervision and monitoring by the higher authorities all might be directly or indirectly responsible for primary school drop out. It has been observed in the study that drop out of school children is higher in rural areas where most people (approximately 80% live below the poverty line) are poor and landless. Now the question is how to raise the income level of the poor so that their children are not withdrawn from the school. There is a need to link these families with other development program including food security implemented by government and non-government agencies. Demands were raised by the community at different locations especially char, haor and costal areas to undertake income generating projects by the government. Projects may also be taken up to create employment opportunities for the rural poor. Government might take initiatives of proper coordination among government and non-government service providers working for food security and poverty alleviation. Micro credit, bank loan, self employment, food for work etc. may be targeted to the families of children with primary school drop out. Coordinated efforts might be taken by development partners to focus their activities on families with drop out children. One example of inter-ministerial collaboration is the implementation of old-age allowance (Bayaska Bhata) program in which Ministry of Social Welfare, LGRD, Ministry of Disaster and Relief and the UNO is involved. Poverty also leads families to engage their children in labor to supplement their income. In fact, child labor cannot be eliminated in a day. It is not always poverty but also the attitude and mind set of the parents and easy availability of earning opportunity that determine family behavior. Poor parents due to lack of awareness fail to perceive the value of education and consider the earning of cash as a better trade off. To discourage child labor Primary Education Department might jointly work with Labor Ministry and other concerned ministries so that enforcement of child labor law is ensured. Increased media activities especially in remote areas where electronic media hardly reach can emphasize the negative impact of child labor. The activities of ROSC program can be extended to areas where child labor is more prevalent or drop out rate is very high.

The quality of performance of teachers and that of their supervisors is another area which contributes to poor academic achievement of the school low and retention of children. Community perceives that because of inadequate skill teachers’ teaching performance is not satisfactory. Reported teacher vacancy and irregular attendance in remote and inaccessible areas is an area of concern that needs to be addressed at the policy level. Conditions may be tied to the new recruits to stay at least for first two years in remote and inaccessible areas. It is understood that teachers are provided with training. School performance, however, indicates either poor applicability or poor quality of training. Although regular, effective monitoring and academic supervision is likely to improve teachers’ performance, there should be an external evaluation to assess the quality of training as well as teaching. Another reason for the poor performance of teachers may be their level of academic qualification. Considering the community demand for better teacher, up gradation of the teachers’ qualification at entry level should be given serious consideration.

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A major problem identified in the system is the problem of record keeping and the existing record keeping system would hardly allow anyone to estimate the actual drop out rate. The teachers in many places are not also very clear about the definition of drop out. Action needed in this regard is to provide younger teachers or assistant teachers with training on related definitions and more particularly on documentation and record keeping. There should be a standardized format for all schools where systematic annual record of enrolment, attendance, repetition, migration, transfer and completion could be kept so that these data could be used for their self-accountability and for any sort of verification.

An analysis of the community recommendations may be useful in order to assess the feasibility of their execution. In respect of the community claim for cent percent stipend coverage, it must be acknowledged that government does not have the resources to do so. What is best to do at the policy level is to review the current distribution proportion and assess whether current forty percent can be increased to 50 percent or more, because in some areas the proportion of people living below the poverty line is much above forty percent. In such areas many deserving children are deprived of the stipend. Again, commodity price hike and economic recession in recent years have taken many families who rose above the poverty margin back to below poverty line. The other alternative left is to focus more on poverty prone areas such as char, haor, and coastal islands etc. where most people live below poverty line. The proportion of stipend distribution can be increased in those areas. There is also alleged corruption in many areas with stipend money. The negative aspect of the stipend money is that cash money encourages corruption and tends to inflate enrollment. Government does not have the resources to provide stipend for long time. Moreover, depending on external financial support from donor countries to meet the demand of education should not continue for long. So, planning should start from now on how to overcome this donor dependency. If mosques and madrashas can run solely on community support, community needs to be mobilized for such support to run primary schools. Physical accessibility can be improved in some places especially in plain lands with better coordination of school community and school authority. School authority and SMC should jointly approach local government for construction of road communication. However, improving accessibility in char and haor areas will always remain a challenge. Encouraging community or local government to manage community boat/boatman for carrying school children during rainy season in char and haor areas is one way to achieve easier access. In places where school buildings are washed away by river erosion needs reconstruction, establishment of new buildings should seriously consider selecting site having better and easier access. DPE should improve the school infrastructure wherever needed. It is understood that PEDP II has the provision for building and extending class rooms. It is important to identify schools with one or two rooms and prioritize the establishment of school buildings in those areas. For out of order tube wells and unusable latrine facilities local level primary school authority can solve many of the problems by approaching the Department of Public Health at the upazilla level. Local level coordination is emphasized here. It has been alleged in some places that quality of construction of school buildings are not good. Community desires that action should be taken to ensure that good quality buildings are constructed. As area wise pre-PEDP data on selected indicators and types of PEDP-II interventions for selected school were not available with the research team it may not be logical to draw any conclusion from this qualitative research whether there has been any positive or negative changes due to PEDP II interventions. For this, the study strongly recommends that a separate impact study may be undertaken to assess the impact of PEDP II interventions on primary school drop out and other indicators. The study findings reflect that enrollment in primary school is satisfactory but primary cycle completion rate is disappointing. This causes huge number of drop out every year. This is a concern of the government and as well as development partners involved in the development

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process of primary education in Bangladesh. To address the above problem the level of community participation needs to be strengthened. There is as such a need to school, family and community relationship. Community and people in general, particularly in rural areas, feel powerless to bring changes and do not know how to organize themselves to affect the changes. As a result participation remains low. Any development big or small is linked with the community and ultimate benefit of this development is enjoyed by the community. So, the role of community to participate in the process is desirable and cannot be ignored. However, in a poor country like Bangladesh people are not those much aware about their importance of participation in all the development process specially initiated by the government. It is therefore needed to work on raising awareness within the community on-

• Community participation • Establishing dialogue • Cooperation with local government • Providing support that complements the local resources to improve local condition • Develop sharing and communication capacity

In fact school, community and family are the three pillars in which students live and grow and relationship or interaction of these pillars is very important because they directly affect children’s learning and development. Development and implementation of this interactive partnership connecting school and community is a complex endeavor which needs a comprehensive behavioral change of school and community actors. This will also make the role of SMC more proactive and transparent. The study shows that a large portion of SMC members, parents and teachers think that parents cannot afford private tutor so the child then drop out from school. But at primary level while education is free then meeting of an additional support of private tutor is needless. Teacher performance must be brought to such a level so that children do not need any extra assistance. Otherwise teachers will give more attention to income earning depriving children of the poor community for whom government is committed and spending huge resource. For the last 2 decades different strategies were undertaken to bring children into primary schools but the progress made is not significant to retain enrolled children in the system. There has been a lot of waste of resources in the name of quality. Our complacency about the very high achievement of enrollment against the very low achievement of completion is extremely paradoxical. We are happy with the input but are not reflecting much at the level of output. Our centralized management system should take some proper planning to develop need-based policy/strategy to make a better link between school and families. Provision for greater autonomy of school can help develop school-community-family partnership for managing not only economic crisis but also retention and drop out problems locally. A child from his/her own family environment may not fit in a new environment unless school authority carefully convinces the child with the purpose of coming to school regularly. Teachers should be soft and kind in their behavior to all children coming from any background of the society.

The study findings reflect that parents in many remote and inaccessible poverty prone areas lack the needed level of awareness. Many of the electronic media messages do not reach these parents who have failed to perceive the value of education well. Alternative media of communicating them properly through social mobilization and other campaigns should be continued seriously in those areas. More IEC materials may be developed and school parents interaction should be enhanced everywhere. Parents should be motivated to participate in school activities. For this emphasis might be given to organize parents meeting on quarterly basis to discuss about importance of education and performance of the students.

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SMC is all areas need to play a better role in increasing enrollment and preventing drop out. Persons interested in educational development might be incorporated as SMC members. Training on SMC role and responsibilities needs to be provided to all SMC members. Since SMC members are selected for a fixed term period, after their departure, most new entrants usually are not aware about their roles and responsibilities. There should be some arrangement to provide training or orientation to the new entrants on the regular basis if possible by local level arrangements. The UEO and the AUEO can take these responsibilities. Strategy should be designed to make the SMC more accountable to the authority. Incentives may be considered to encourage for better participation of SMC members in school development activities. Participation of woman member in the SMC might be increased. About the increased role of local government we suggest that representation or participation of local government in SMC or other committees related to school development activities should be ensured. This participation especially in the school development plan is strongly recommended. This would enhance better community mobilization and also improve the level of transparency of the school affairs. AEUO during their school visits can interact with local government representatives of the respective catchment and apprise them at least on a quarterly basis about the various school related issues. They should specifically discuss drop out during these interactions. Monitoring and supervision of schools seem to have remained the area where DPE is yet to bring desired improvement. Supervision should be ensured from the central to the school level. Assigned supervisor at the school level should be accountable for low performing (low attendance, low retention, high drop out, performance of scholarship exam) school under his/her cluster. This can be done by taking disciplinary actions against the defaulters. SMC members might visit school and maintain record of performance of teachers for review and discussion in the meeting. Local government representatives might also visit the school to monitor the school activities.

Actions needed to be taken at the central/policy level:

• Hold inter-ministerial meeting to decide how other ministries and non-government organizations can collaborate to target families of drop out children with development activities including food security and other assistance. Ministry of Local Government, Rural Development and Cooperative and Ministry of Disaster and Relief can play a vital role.

• Ministry of Primary and Mass Education should work jointly with the Ministry of Labor and Manpower and other relevant ministries to ensure the effective enforcement of Child Labor Laws. Joint campaign and increased media activities especially in remote rural areas emphasizing the negative impact of child labor need to be undertaken.

• The current distribution proportion of stipend should be reviewed and increasing the proportion of stipend distribution in poverty prone areas should be given serious consideration.

• DPE investigate possible extension of the ROSC program activities to areas where child labor is more prevalent or drop out rate is very high.

• Expedite teacher recruitment process to fill up the vacant positions of teachers.

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• Evaluate the current quality of teachers training, training application and teacher performance.

• Up-gradation of teachers qualification at entry level should be given serious consideration.

Actions needed to be taken at the local level:

• AUEO during their routine school visit can guide teachers how to maintain proper records of enrollment, completion, repetition and drop outs as proper record keeping is not widely in practice.

• There should be system of reviewing the SMC minutes to assess what actions have been taken for the drop out children in each catchment area.

• There are many instances that early marriage can be prevented with local initiative with the intervention of local administration and right based NGOs. However, at the local level, Ministry of Social Welfare and Ministry of Women and Children Affairs should be involved.

• Design a local level planning at UEO level as to how monitoring and supervision can be made effective by ensuring academic supervision.

• School community should be encouraged to take some responsibilities of establishing or renovating school infrastructure such as reconstruction of an unusable latrine or repairing a tube well so that there is need to change the attitude of looking for government help for everything.

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References 1. Primary Education in Bangladesh-1999 Directorate of Primary Education 2. Primary Education Statistics in Bangladesh-2001 3. Project-Proforma (PP) Primary Education Development Programme-PEDP-II,DPE,Dhaka 4. Education and Society- Bangladesh Perspective published by World Peace Academy 5. Baseline Report-2005, Directorate of Primary Education Bangladesh 6. Access to Education in Bangladesh (Country Analytic Review of Primary and

Secondary Education), BRAC University 7. Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey, Ministry of Planning GoB 8. Education for All Status And Trends 1998 9. Wasted Opportunities When School Fail. 10. Preliminary Report on Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2005 11. Consortium for Research on Educational Access Transitions and Equity

(CREATE-2007) 12. Listening to Poor People’s Realities About Primary Health Care and Primary

Education, Reality Check 2008, SIDA, Bangladesh 13. Annual Sector Performance Report (ASPR, 2006) 14. PROG-3, DPE

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Annex A : List of Data Collection Team Members Facilitators –

1. Khondokar Manjurul Haque 2. Fahim Rezwan 3. Md. Moslem Uddin 4. Md. Shahidullah 5. Linet Ribika Baidya 6. Mohammed Uzzal Hussein

Co- Facilitators –

1. Shah Alom Ador 2. Shuhorat Amin 3. Doulat Ara 4. Sabina Akter Minu 5. Showkat Ahmed 6. Amena Khatun Rozina

Note Takers –

1. Maruf 2. Salina Sultana 3. Bilkis Islam 4. Nadira Khatun 5. Shihanur Rahman 6. Mamataz Akter

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Documents

Drop_Out_Report09[1]