Although improved enrollment rates are indeed an important achievement, ?very high dropout, both at the primary and secondary levels, makes high gross and net enrollment rates virtually meaningless as indicators of access and participation?. Fewer than 50 percent of the students who do enter school in Class 1 remain in the system long enough to complete Class 5. Those who are able to complete the five-year primary school cycle, take an average of 8.6 years to do so. An Education Watch report (2008) found that students who made it to the end of Class 5 achieved less than two-thirds of fundamental competencies in literacy and numeracy.

Dropout and Repetition

 Reported dropout rates hover between 10-15 percent each year between Classes 1-4.

 They spike dramatically to over 25 percent during Class 5, before steadily declining during secondary school.

 There is a relatively high (83 percent) rate of students who complete Class 5 transitioning to Class 6.

 Dropout data may be unreliable due to poor practices of data collection, including the inability to accurately capture children of migrant laborers who frequently leave one school but subsequently enroll in another.

Socioeconomic Factors

Socioeconomic disparities between the rich and the poor in Bangladesh are vast the top 5 percent of the population controls more than 25 percent of the country?s wealth, while the lowest 20 percent of the population controls only about 9 percent of the country?s wealth.

Children from ultra-poor and marginalized communities are particularly vulnerable to education disparity. Poverty is one of the reasons most commonly cited by families for dropout or non-enrollment of their children. This generally manifests itself in one or both of two ways: the family is unable to bear the actual costs of education such as school and tuition fees, or the family finds the opportunity cost of children attending school to be too high. Many children in poor families have responsibilities outside of school ranging from cooking and childcare to earning wages to support their families. Time spent towards school cannot be spent on these other responsibilities. In this context, formal education is sometimes viewed as a lower priority that can be sacrificed for the sake of the others.

School-Level Factors

The number and quality of schools and teachers are impacted by a general lack of resources and infrastructure in the country as well as the particularly low allocation of government funds towards education and how they are spent. The government of Bangladesh spends less than 1 percent of GDP on primary school education, and only 2.2 percent of GDP on education in total. This is one of the lowest expenditures on education in the world.

There is a severe shortage in the supply of schools and teachers compared to the number of low-income school-aged children, particularly in rural and remote areas. Even in the capital city of Dhaka, however, around 300 government primary schools serve around 800,000 primary-aged children. In order to accommodate large numbers of students with limited resources, UNICEF reports that 90 percent of schools run double shift, ?meaning that student in Grade 1 & 2 attend in the morning (2 hours) and Grade 3 to 5 in the afternoon (3.5 hours).? As a result, primary students in Bangladesh spend an average of 500 hours in the classroom a year – meeting about half the international standard of 900 to 1000 hours a year. Taken in consideration with high student absenteeism rates of 19 percent, UNICEF estimates actual average contact hours could be even lower.

During the limited number of hours they are able to spend in class with students, teachers are often overwhelmed by large class sizes. The average student to teacher ratio in Bangladeshi classrooms is over 50 to 1. In many poor classrooms this ratio is higher.

Teachers are poorly trained, inadequately supported and irregularly evaluated in the monumental task before them. In order to meet the size of the demand, the government allows high school graduates to apply for primary school teaching positions. Less than a third of teachers in government primary schools hold a university degree. Teacher professionalism and motivation runs low, while, correspondingly, absenteeism runs high. A BEPS study reported:

Teachers [in Bangladesh] rarely have a lesson plan. The percentage of teachers using a lesson plan in poor schools is as low as 20 percent... Such unprofessional practices have become the culture of the teacher community in the formal primary schools in general. The only exceptions to this are in the urban private schools.

A study conducted at Dhaka University found that ?teacher training in Bangladesh is not adequately linked to what teachers need to survive the difficult and challenges conditions of teaching and learning in the typical primary school. In-service training is sporadic and teacher support at school level is weak. There is no systematic and concerted plan to upgrade the teaching skills of all primary school teachers.?

Although highly respected culturally within the community, teaching is not professionalized as a middle-class occupation, as it is in much of the developed world. One indication is that senior teachers in government primary schools typically earn TK 4000 (70 USD) a month, which, according to Al Jazeera, is less than a ?government factory worker.?

Now this is our duty, the duty of youth to change the scenario and spread the education, not expecting to be paid, but to be as a volunteer change maker to the society.