Families spend higher on kid's edu than Nepal, Pakistan: Unesco

Families have to bear 71% of the cost of children's education in Bangladesh, according to the Unesco Global Education Monitoring Report 2022.

Fees and other expenses at private schools are triple those of government institutions. In the case of private kindergartens, this amount of expenditure is almost nine times higher, according to the report released at a national launching programme for Bangladesh at a city hotel on Tuesday.

The report – prepared in association with Brac – shows that families in Pakistan bear 57% of the cost of the education of their children.

In Nepal, families bear 63% of the costs of pre-primary education and 75% of the costs of technical and vocational education and training.

Households in India spent five times more on private schools than on government schools in 2017 and 2018.

Rasheda K Choudhury, executive director at the Campaign for Popular Education, who was also present at the report launch event, told TBS that government support is available in various ways, particularly at the primary and secondary levels.

"In the primary, almost the entire expenses are borne by the government. And in secondary, there are books, infrastructure, scholarships, MPOs (monthly pay orders), and many other things," she added.

Rasheda K Choudhury said, "Besides the support of the government, there are many expenses, such as books, clothes, food, and hostel rent. Like in other countries, these are our out-of-pocket expenses, which are one of the highest in South Asia."

In addition to increasing investment in private education, the regulatory framework should be strengthened and brought into accountability, she added.

With the global pandemic, the cost of education has risen, resulting in many families going into debt just so their children can pursue an education, says the Unesco report.

It added that costs such as tuition, private tuition, stationery, and many more are attached to both private and public schools.

With the current state of rising inflation, education has become a burden for many families, the report said. While South Asia has made tremendous progress in education access, the cost of keeping up with it is inadequate.

It shows that Bangladesh, like some other south Asian countries, spends less than 2.5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education, while the UN recommends spending at least 4% of GDP. As a result, households account for the largest share of total education spending in Bangladesh, at 71%.

According to the report, about 12% of households in South Asia maintain savings, and 6% borrow to pay for school fees.

About one-third of families in Bangladesh take out loans to pay for their children's education in private polytechnics.

Professor Emeritus of Brac University Manzoor Ahmad said, "We have economic progress. But education investment did not increase accordingly. Other South Asian countries are in a better situation than Bangladesh. Teachers have no accountability in many cases. More reforms in the Monthly Pay Order (MPO) model are necessary."

According to the report, non-state actors are more involved in all aspects of the education system in South Asia than in any other region of the world.

According to the report, Bangladesh has the largest number of students in the private sector in South Asia. In Bangladesh, 94% of secondary school students study at private institutions.

Education Minister Dipu Moni said, "The number of seats in our private school is around 9.25 lakh, where 2.76 lakh have applied. And in government schools, whose standards are claimed to be not so good, there are around 1.7 lakh seats where 5.34 lakh applied, which suggests people's inclination towards government institutions."

"We need to make the teaching profession much more attractive. If we fail to do that, people who cannot go anywhere else will take this job," she added.

The report states that, while access to education has grown faster than in any other region in the past few decades in South Asia, learning levels are more than one-third below the global average and growing more slowly than in the rest of the world.