Child Equity Atlas - BIDS

Literacy, School Attendance and Educational Attainment
Literacy, School Attendance and Educational Attainment
3.0.0 Education is the best means to build
and harness human capital into reducing
poverty, achieving sustainable economic
growth and development. Many studies
substantiate the positive links between an
improved level of education and higher
10, 11
level of growth and development.
Along with life expectancy and gross domestic
product (GDP) indices, the education index is a
key component of the UNDP human development
index (HDI) 2012 report 12 . Bangladesh has made
remarkable progress in education, but national
values hide disparities. The analysis of the
census data from the life cycle intergenerational
attainments in education unearths patterns of
achievements and pockets of deprivations for
policy and programme action in this crucial sector.
3.0.1 Belfield (2008) and Samuelsson and Kaga
(2008) demonstrate that childhood education leads
to sound intellectual, psychological, emotional,
social and physical foundation for children to
become more productive citizens in adulthood 13 .
Broad-based primary, secondary and adult
education is likely to give developing economies
10
J. Benhabib and M.M. Spiegel, “The Role of Human Capital
in Economic Development: Evidence from Aggregate Crosscountry
Data”, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol. 34, No. 2,
1994, pp. 143-173.
11
T.A. Islam, M.A. Wadud, and Q.T. Islam, “Relationship
between Education and GDP Growth: A Mutivariate Causality
Analysis for Bangladesh.” Economics Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 35,
2007, pp. 1-7.
12
UNDP 2012 Human Development Report: http://hdrstats.
undp.org/en/countries/profiles/BGD.html
13
C.R. Belfield, The Economic Benefits of Investments in Early
Education for Hawai’i, Queens College, City University of New
York, New York, 2008; and I.P. Samuelsson and Y. Kaga, “Introduction”,
in I.P. Samuelsson and Y. Kaga (eds.), The Contribution
of Early Childhood Education to a Sustainable Society,
UNESCO, Paris, 2008.
the human capital boost necessary to bring large
segments of the population out of poverty, and
stimulate growth.
3.0.2 During the last two decades, Bangladesh
has made significant progress in primary education
for both boys and girls in respect of increasing
the enrollment, reducing the dropout, and
closing the gender parity gap. The challenges,
however, remain around completion of primary
education, quality of education and adult
literacy levels.
3.0.3 This chapter presents the spatial status
of educational attainment of Bangladesh and its
growth over the last 10 years from 2001 to 2011,
derived from the Census data. The educational
outcome indicators analyzed include:
a) Youth literacy rate (15-24 years)
b) Adult literacy rate (15 years and above)
c) School attendance rate at age five
d) School attendance rate at primary (6-10
years)
e) Net attendance rate at primary (6-10 years)
f) Proportion of out of school children (6-10
years)
g) School attendance rate at secondary (11-15
years)
h) Net attendance rate at secondary (11-15
years)
i) Proportion of out of school children (11-15
years)
j) Youth (15-24 years) versus adult (40-49 years)
literacy rates
As the censuses did not collect information on
quality of education, this aspect of educational
achievement has not been studied.
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