In 1991, girls accounted for about 33 percent of children enrolled in secondary school and, of those, only a relatively small percentage passed the Secondary School Certificate.
The Bangladesh Female Secondary School Assistance Program, financed by IDA, supported a government program to improve access to secondary education for girls by providing tuition stipends. It improved the quality of schools through teacher training, provision of performance incentives to schools and students, and water and sanitation facilities. The project covered 119 of Bangladesh’s 480 sub-districts.
Girls’ enrollment in secondary school in Bangladesh jumped to 3.9 million in 2005, from 1.1 million in 1991, including an increasing number of girls from disadvantaged or remote areas. This has enabled Bangladesh to achieve one of its Millennium Development Goals ahead of time – gender parity in education.
Highlights:
- Female enrollment, as a percentage of total enrollment, increased from 33 percent in 1991 to 48 percent in 1997 and about 56 percent in 2005.
- Secondary School Certificate pass rates for girls in the project area increased from 39 percent in 2001 to 58 percent in 2006.
- 66,000 members of school management committees have been trained in school management accountability, with a focus on education quality and a conducive learning school environment.
- 6,666 schools – many more than originally targeted – are currently participating in the program, through a cooperation agreement with the Ministry of Education.
- Indirect benefits of the project included delays in the age of marriage and reduced fertility rates, better nutrition, and more females employed with higher incomes.
- US$185 million since 1993.
- In the early 1990s, the government of Bangladesh formulated its policy for enhancing girls’ access to secondary education. IDA established implementation arrangements to take forward the government’s policy initiative on a major scale.
- IDA helped build and strengthen a program management unit within the Ministry of Education that now manages and oversees the stipend program.
- A key innovation was the direct funding mechanism featuring the transfer of stipends directly from banks to individual girls’ bank accounts.
The Asian Development Bank, the Canadian International Development Agency, the European Commission and the Norwegian Agency for International Development.
The program has proven ground-breaking in addressing girls’ access to education, and is recognized worldwide as a pioneering undertaking. As a result, the government of Bangladesh decided to expand the program nationwide. A number of other countries, learning from Bangladesh experience, have implemented similar stipend or conditional cash transfer programs with IDA support.
Having achieved gender parity at the country level, the government is now focusing more on how to reach economically and geographically disadvantaged girls - as well as poor boys. Along with the stipend program, the Ministry of Education is undertaking reforms aimed at improving education quality through better governance and accountability. IDA is supporting this through a series of education sector development credits.
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