Diseño del Plan de Vigilancia

Children physically present in class but psychologically and intellectually absent and therefore not participating and engaging in learning, is a phenomenon that affects a large proportion of children, both at primary and secondary levels. In magnitude, it is next to dropout (exclusion zone 2), but definitely much larger than non-enrollment (zone 1) and non-transition from primary to secondary level (zone 4). Yet this area has not been given specific attention in programmes and strategies and its quantitative and qualitative dimensions are not well understood. This area is appropriately seen as a domain of quality of education, but it clearly has access and participation implications. In this third zone of exclusion, access and quality issues interact and overlap most directly.

Factors which have impact on virtual exclusion originate in both school and home and often interact to magnify the adverse consequences. Education Watch 2003/4, based on a survey of households and schools in ten sample upazilas (sub-districts), indicates a number of such factors:

•47 percent of the mothers and 43 percent of the fathers of primary school children in the upazilas were without any schooling. Both parents were without education for a third of the children. Almost half of the children can be regarded as "first generation learners" if the criterion regarding

100.0 83.4 71.7 65.8 47.8 39.8 20.1 0 20 40 60 80 100

Cla s s VI Cla s s VII Cla s s VIII Cla s s IX Cla s s X Te s t e xa m P a s s in s chool fina l Va rious s ta ge s of s e conda ry e duca tion

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Figure 8. Grade-wise retention rate based on reconstructed cohort analysis

Re te nt io n ra te

mothers’ education is applied. Inability of parents to guide and help their children, and the likely economic disadvantage of these families, affect how the first generation learners perform in school.

•Private tutors for primary school children have become a norm. Forty three percent of the children had private tutors; they paid an average of Tk. 152 per month for eight months in a year. Eighteen percent of the children from "deficit" families and 57 percent from "surplus" families (in respect of supply of staple food for the family) had private tutors. Children who most needed extra help with their studies received the least help from private tutoring. •Low average school attendance, about 60 percent, encapsulated many factors

related to both the operation of the school and the family situation of the child. Causes identified were children's need to help at home either regularly or for seasonal farm work, ill health or sickness of the child or a parent, acute family economic problems, and falling behind in lessons with no help to catch up from teacher or at home. Without the capacity of school and willingness or ability of teachers to help the child to catch up, any disruption set in motion a vicious spiral of further lag, more absences, and eventual dropping out.

•Children with special needs, especially those with disabilities, and children of ethnic minorities whose mother tongue is not Bangla, form a special dimension in the picture of deprivation in primary education (Ahmed et al, 2005).

4.3.1 Absenteeism and Repetition

The Education Watch 2003/4 survey roughly matched the official estimate of about 60 percent average attendance in class - with a higher rate for GPS and non-formal school, and lower attendance rate in RNGPS and madrassas. (Table 27)

Table 27: Primary school attendance rate by school type and sex

Source: Education Watch 2003/4, Annex Table 5.4

Teachers recognised absenteeism as a problem and saw this as a precursor to dropout. Focus groups identified the following causes behind absenteeism:

•Children, especially those from poor families needed to help parents at home. This became a more acute problem seasonally in relation to farm work.

School type Boys Girls Both

Government 64.7 67.2 66.0

RNGPS 58.0 59.4 58.7

Madrassa 54.3 58.9 56.5

Natural disasters such as floods and heavy rain caused disruption in school and kept children from class, which affected the poor families more severely.

•Lagging behind in lessons, not able to do home work and the fear of being punished or abused for this reason were seen important causes for staying away from school. Once this happened, this became the beginning of a slippery slope. •Lack of parental care and support. Teachers were of the view that the absence of

parents' concern, support and guidance, when the child faced any problem at school or in school work, was a major factor that led to absence, repetition of years, and dropping out. The lack of parental concern often actually was lack of ability to help children and understand how the child could be helped - again often a problem related to family socio-economic and education status.

•Visiting relatives and social obligations. Social and family obligations, visiting relatives and attending to family duties, were seen as a cause for absenteeism. This again related to parents' lack of understanding about the child's educational needs.

•Ill health and sickness. When these causes kept children from school, normally there was no opportunity to make up and catch up in school unless a special arrangement was made with the help of private tutors ( Ahmed et al, 2005) 4.3.2 Child Labour

Child labour and the ability and opportunity to participate in education are closely linked. The status of child labour in the upazilas and how it related to children's participation in education was examined in the Education Watch household survey. Child labour was defined as "participation in any type of work for at least three hours during three successive days prior to the interview."

Table 28: Child labour by economic status among children aged 6-14 years

Source: Education Watch 2003/4, Table 5.5

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d h / bl

Economic status Number of

students Only student (%) Both student & worker (%) Only worker (%) Neither (%) Always in deficit 353 41.4 25.2 17.8 15.6 Sometimes in deficit 2,010 51.3 31.2 11.4 6.0 Break even 3,836 56.8 30.3 7.4 5.4 Surplus 2,590 61.8 30.7 5.3 2.2 Total 8,789 56.5 30.4 8.1 5.0

Table 28 shows that 43 percent of the children of age 6-14 years were engaged in child labour as defined in the survey. Thirty percent of the children were both students and workers simultaneously. However among the very poor, ("household always in food deficit"), over 40 percent were students who did not work, and one-third were in child labour or without employment, but not in school. A quarter of the children in this category were both students and engaged in work. By contrast, in the "surplus" households, 62 percent were only students, 31 percent were both students and workers, and only 7.5 percent were non-students. The data did not specifically establish if and how child labour affected children's education.

4.3.3 Other Factors Related to Virtual Exclusion

There could be a variety of reasons for being inattentive, absent-minded or non- participant in class. On one extreme could be autism or other psychological conditions which teachers, even with PTI training, are not equipped to recognize. It could also be due to a number of other problems, such as the child being hungry, problems at home, peer group problems, and other social and psychological factors. Above all are the classroom teaching-learning practices, which may not engage and motivate the child. These factors call for further investigation to complement available sporadic evidence. (See Education Watch 2003/4, ch. 6, "Ensuring Better Learning")

There is no systematic and agreed mechanism in the primary and secondary education levels for assessing and monitoring participation and learning of pupils. At the primary stage, there is so far no end-of-cycle public assessment. A public examination for primary education is planned to be introduced. No standard achievement benchmarks exist for skills by grades in key subject areas such as mathematics and language. These could be used to assess how far students are engaged in learning and how students, teachers and schools are performing. 4.4 Exclusion Zone 4: No Transition to/ Early Dropout from Secondary Stage As noted earlier, available data suggest a relatively high transition rate from primary to secondary level, but effective participation beyond initial entry into secondary school remains low. Education Watch 2005, in the absence of collection and analysis of relevant information through a management information system, provides some insight into the state of participation in secondary education:

•Enrollment of girls has surged ahead of boys by 11 percentage points at 50.6 percent compared to 39.6 percent for boys on a net basis. This has been a broad-based progress across geographical areas and socio-economic strata. •There remains a large urban-rural gap of 10 percentage points – at 43.6 percent

net enrollment in rural areas and 54.0 percent in urban rates. Slums in large urban cities fare the worst with only 18 percent net enrollment.

•Economic status and parental education are closely correlated with education participation. Children of households with "surplus" food availability have more than double the chance of being in school than children in "deficit" households. (Table 29) Three quarters of children of mothers with secondary education are in secondary school compared with 31 percent for mothers with no formal education.

•On reasons for non-participation, two responses stood out – "scarcity of money" or poverty, and children’s "dislike of school", which indicates problems in respect of classroom practices. The third most frequent response was the need for the child to work, which is linked to poverty. Poverty appears to be the predominant cause of non-participation in secondary education as shown in Tables 29 and 30. (Ahmed et al, 2006)

Table 29: Net enrollment rate at secondary level by gender and yearly food security status of household

Note: Figures in parentheses indicate number of children aged 11-15 years Source: Education Watch 2005, Table 4.6

Table 30: Percentage distribution of 11-15 years out-of-school children by causes of non-enrollment, residence and gender

Source: Education Watch 2005, Table 4.11

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Gender Food security status

of household

Girls Boys Both

Level of significance Always in deficit 29.4 (1,167) 21.3 (1,240) 25.2 (2,407) p<0.001 Sometimes in deficit 46.1 (2,010) 35.8 (2,045) 40.8 (4,055) p<0.001 Break-even 56.0 (2,400) 43.7 (2,388) 49.9 (4,788) p<0.001 Surplus 64.0 (1,742) 54.2 (1,628) 59.2 (3,370) p<0.001 Level of significance p<0.001 p<0.001 p<0.001 All Bangladesh (%) Rural Bangladesh (%) Urban Bangladesh (%) Causes

Girls Boys Both Girls Boys Both Girls Boys Both

Scarcity of money 50.0 46.6 48.1 46.8 45.8 46.2 66.8 52.2 59.5 Child dislikes school 14.7 30.3 23.6 15.7 30.1 24.0 9.4 31.5 20.4 Child works at/outside home 7.2 11.1 9.4 7.7 11.9 10.1 4.6 5.1 4.8 Marriage 8.3 0.2 3.7 8.8 0.2 3.8 5.7 0.0 2.9 Unsuccessful in exam 2.9 2.6 2.7 3.1 2.6 2.8 2.2 2.6 2.4 Disability 2.0 2.3 2.2 2.4 2.2 2.3 0.4 2.6 1.5 School is too

far from home

3.1 1.5 2.2 3.6 1.6 2.4 0.7 0.2 0.4 No use of education 1.5 2.2 1.9 1.5 2.3 2.0 1.7 2.0 1.9 Security concerns 3.2 0.0 1.4 3.6 0.1 1.5 1.3 0.2 0.8 Admission refused in school 1.4 0.5 0.9 1.4 0.4 0.9 1.3 0.9 1.1 Others 5.5 2.8 4.0 5.5 2.8 3.9 5.9 2.6 4.3 Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00

4.5 Some Common Factors Affecting Exclusion