PublicPrivate Partnership to Improve Access to and Quality of Secondary Education in Bangladesh Md'

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Public-Private Partnership to Improve Access to
and Quality of Secondary Educationin
BangladeshMd. Ashraful MoqbulAdditional
SecretaryMinistry of Education,
BangladeshConference on Quality Education for
AllOctober 2007, New Delhi
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The Secondary Education Scenario

• An interesting case of public-private
  partnership. 98 of provision of secondary
  education is private. Still, 95 school funds
  come from Government in the form of subvention.
• The positive aspect Community initiated,
  community owned and managed, potential for
  comprehensive country-wide coverage

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The Secondary Education Scenario

• The issues
• Regulations and systemic arrangements to
  facilitate better performance of the system and
  quality improvement in an environment of
  ever-expanding provision
• Ensuring incentives for expansion of secondary
  education in disadvantaged areas and communities
• Warding off bad political interference in
  establishing schools, getting subvention support
  and recruiting teachers
• Measuring and monitoring performance of
  institutions
• Poor quality is still a huge issue in secondary
  education.

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GOB Initiatives

• GOB has taken a number of initiatives focusing
  on
• Governance and systemic improvement for better
  and more equitable allocation of resources and to
  enhance quality and access
• Provision of incentives to institutions for
  better performance and for private provision of
  education in disadvantaged areas
• Provision of incentives to children and families
  to access secondary education
• Measures to improve teacher quality
• Improvement of the quality of textbooks and
  curriculum
• Assessing and monitoring performance of
  institutions
• In these efforts, GOB is supported by a number of
  DPs.

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A. Governance and Systemic Improvement

• The objectives are
• To establish transparency in the use and
  allocation of resources to schools and colleges,
• To make resource allocation more equitable and
  targeted to the poor
• To increase the accountability of non-government
  institutions, and
• To develop a more efficient management of
  secondary and higher secondary education with
  greater stakeholder involvement.

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A. Governance and Systemic Improvement

• Issue School recognition and subvention
• Although there were comprehensive quality and
  access criteria for granting recognition and
  providing subvention to new schools, they were
  not adhered to, due to lack of evaluation
  capacity of Education Boards and political
  pressures on the MOE officials.
• Action
• Evaluation of non-government schools/colleges for
  recognition and subventions are now left to
  independent evaluating agencies. These agencies
  themselves are evaluated from time to time.

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A. Governance and Systemic Improvement

• Issue
• Tightening and better monitoring of criteria for
  financing schools may lead to greater inequity in
  access, with the poorer areas being most
  adversely affected.
• Action
• MOE is catalyzing community initiatives to
  establish new schools/expand existing schools in
  underserved areas with due attention to the
  realities on the ground.

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B. Incentives for better performance

• Issue
• Tying subvention to performance. Absence of this
  practice led to a situation where schools lacked
  incentive to improve performance in the past.
• Action
• MOE issued an administrative order amending the
  criteria for receiving subvention. Schools not
  meeting revised performance criteria are notified
  that their subvention would be stopped unless
  they improve performance within two years.
  Schools not performing well are then provided
  needed support and well performing schools
  receive rewards and recognition.

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B. Incentives for better performance

• A number of measures taken to further improve
  performance of students and institutions
• Incentive for school improvement plans
• SSC incentive awards and recognition to schools
• Achievement awards and recognition to best
  performing students
• Achievement awards and recognition to most
  improving students

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C. Incentives to Enhance Access

• A country wide stipend to promote girls
  education
• Now being extended also to boys
• Being targeted to the poor based on a set of
  poverty criteria
• Girl students supported by Family Attractiveness
  Program
• New School Program for disadvantaged and
  underserved areas and communities.

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D. Improving Quality of Teachers

• The objective is
• to develop a transparent and high-quality system
  of teacher recruitment and teacher training.

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D. Improving Quality of Teachers

• Issue
• In the past, the existing rules and regulations
  for teacher recruitment were not followed
  strictly. This led to rent-seeking, nepotism and
  political interferences in recruiting teachers.
• Action
• To combat this, the Government has established
  an autonomous Non-government Teacher Registration
  and Certification Authority (NTRCA) responsible
  for pre-qualifying teacher-candidates based on
  academic qualification and standardized
  examination. SMCs are to recruit from a
  pre-qualified pool of teachers.

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D. Improving Quality of Teachers

• GOB is establishing a National Council for
  Teacher Education (NCTE) to coordinate,
  streamline and define standards for teacher
  education.
• Beginning 2008, all new teachers to be accredited
  will need at least one year B. Ed. training.
• Under a five-year plan, all untrained teachers
  existing in the system are being provided
  in-service training
• 40 Mobile Training Resource Teams (MTRT) are
  providing hands-on training to teachers at their
  institutions.

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E. Textbooks and Curriculum

• The main objective is
• To improve transparency in selection and approval
  of textbooks, competitive production of better
  quality textbooks in a cost-effective and timely
  manner.
• To revise curriculum to meet the changing demand

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E. Textbooks Curriculum

• Issue
• NCTB was not transparent in evaluation of
  textbook manuscript, especially in case of
  private publishers. This led to rent-seeking,
  poor quality textbook production, high production
  cost and unavailability of textbooks on time.
• Action
• Production of textbooks for all grades from 6 to
  12 is open to competition.

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F. Assessing and Monitoring Performance

• Issue
• Inadequate data collection, monitoring
  evaluation constrained policy-making.
• Action
• MOE is tracking education performance and
  public expenditures. It is working on
  institutionalizing data collection, enhancing
  data collection capacity all geared toward
  helping better policy and planning.

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F. Assessing and Monitoring Performance

• Assessment of students
• At entry level Grade 6 to see the quality at
  entry
• At Grade 8 to see how the system is performing in
  terms of student achievement
• At terminal exams at Grades 10 and 12
• Also performance of Bangladeshi students is
  benchmarked against international standards
  (e.g., TIMSS) to help policy formulation,
  planning and needed intervention
• Still a long way to go, but the process has been
  initiated

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Some Preliminary Evidence on Impact

• 1300 institutions were served warning regarding
  suspension of subventions. Subventions of 368 of
  worse performing institutions suspended in 2005
  and 2006.
• 2608 schools showed significant improvement in
  performance
• 57 new schools have been established in
  disadvantaged areas
• Pass rates in SSC exam rise to 59 in 2006 from a
  baseline of 40 in 2002. Pass rates in HSC
  examinations rise to 64 in 2006 from a baseline
  of 38 in 2002.
• Teacher absenteeism in 2005 was down to 11 from
  a baseline of 17 in 2002. Political interference
  and nepotism in teacher recruitment are
  reportedly substantially reduced.
• 27 of public resources are now targeted to the
  poor against a baseline of 24 in 2003

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Some Preliminary Evidence on Impact

• 21 in-service teachers trained against the
  baseline of 10 in 2003
• Significant decline in cheating in standardized
  examinations
• Competitive process followed for production and
  publication of all textbooks at secondary and
  higher secondary levels.
• For the last few years, books have been delivered
  to students on time.

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A long journey, which has started, hopefully
in the right directionThank you

• .