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    Competencies achievement of BRAC school students: trends, comparisons and predictors
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2012-04) Nath, Samir Ranjan
    The National Curriculum and Textbook Board in Bangladesh specified 50 terminal competencies which are supposed to be achieved by the students’ throughout the cycle of primary education. The competency-based test instrument which was developed for Education Watch 2000 was administered on a sample of BRAC school graduates of each year during 2000-2010. This monograph is an outcome of analyses of all these test results. Although the rural BRAC non-formal schools were common in each year, samples from BRAC’s non-formal urban, formal and community schools and the schools for ethnic minorities were taken in some years. Sometimes, the government primary schools were also included. Taking all these test data into account, this monograph presents a repeated cross-sectional analysis of performance of BRAC schools. Comparison of various types of BRAC schools, rural and urban schools, and with government schools are also provided. Separate analyses for boys and girls were done as a cross-cutting issue. The findings reveal that the performance of BRAC non-formal school students increased over time. The students did best in environmental studies (science and social studies) followed by Bangla, mathematics and English. Urban students did better than the rural students and the Bangalis than the ethnic minorities. Best performance was observed in BRAC formal schools followed by community schools and non-formal schools. Variation among schools and students persisted although reduced over time. Three major predictors of both types of variations were quality of teachers assessed by the area managers, proportion of contents taught in the classrooms and religion of the students. The former two positively influenced the achievement of competencies and the Muslim students performed better than the non-Muslims. If the programme organizers were frequently changed or they were given more schools to supervise, the students performed poorly. Contribution of the school and teacher-related factors in predicting learning achievement was more than that of the supervisors and students background characteristics. The BRAC school students were more likely to do well in the test compared to those in the government schools. Magnitude of difference was more among the girls than the boys. However, in both the cases, boys outperformed the girls.
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    How does a branch experience during the transition? A case study of cost recovery approach in BRAC education programme
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2017) Babu, Rasel; Iftikhar Ul Karim, Md
    BRAC initiated Education programme in 1985 to provide free primary education opportunity to the disadvantage children of the poor community through its non-formal primary education intervention. Various development partners generously donated in this great effort which enabled BRAC to operate the education programme in a philanthropic approach for long thirty-one years. In 2015, Bangladesh achieved ‘lower middle-income country’ status which caused a shrink in receiving the foreign donations. BRAC therefore adopted cost recovery approach in 2016. The parents now pay a lump sum tuition fee for educating their children in BRAC’s primary schools. A year of cost recovery has already passed. To adapt with the strategic transformation of the organisation BRAC Education programme (BEP) developed their Annual Operating Plan (AOP) and Implementation Plan (IP). A need for documenting BEP’s massive transformation process has been realized by the higher management of BRAC. As part of the process documentation exercise, the current study had been initiated. The research question of this study was- how a branch office at field level experienced the overall transition process while operating BRAC Primary School (BPS) through cost recovery approach? To answer this question four areas such as (1) the dissemination process of cost recovery model to the project stakeholders, (2) the operational and financial management process of the model, (3) the beneficiaries’ perception towards cost recovery and (4) the updated status of BEP’s implementation plan-2017 during cost recovery approach were explored.
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    Slum pre primary graduates in primary education a tracer study on BEHTRUWC sibling project
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2018) Nath, Samir Ranjan; Hossain, Mohammad Anwar; Chowdhury, Tanjeeba
    The importance of early childhood care and education in life is well documented. Education during early-years has been emphasised in many international documents. The second target of the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) called for ensuring quality early-years care and education for preparing children for primary education. Literature shows that a large proportion of the children in developing countries including slums are exposed to multiple risks, which detrimentally affect their cognitive, motor and socio-emotional development. Therefore, high quality early-years care, education and development is suggested for them. With a few exceptions, the duration of pre-primary education (PPE) is one year in Bangladesh, which is provided by the government and nongovernment schools and NGOs. A national curriculum has been prepared to implement such education. Slums are common in the low-and-middle income countries (LMICs), along with growing urbanisation. In Bangladesh, the number of slums are increasing over time, along with the inhabitants. Slum dwellers in Bangladesh are lagging much behind the non-slum urban dwellers with regard to housing structure, toilet facilities and availability of pure drinking water; however, they are still more likely to get better facilities than their rural counterparts. In terms of access to education and achieving literacy, the slum population is lagging behind both their urban and rural counterparts.
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    Poverty, protection and exclusion in rural Bangladesh
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2015-08) Ara, Jinnat; Ahasan, Abu; Ahmad, Sibbir; Kamruzzaman, Md
    Social protection is one of the key strategies of fighting against long-lasting and intergenerational poverty in Bangladesh. The concept has significantly evolved both in scale and scope in recent times. Targeted pro-poor interventions in public services and safety net programmes have been scaled up. However, access to institutions is an issue of grave concern especially for poor people. Although, recent years have witnessed almost 100 per cent school enrolment, drop out rate is still high especially among the ultra poor children. Advocacy is BRAC’s latest tool to address the critical issues of accessibility and utilisation of resources by the ultra poor. Looking at social protection interventions through the conceptual lens of ‘social exclusion’, this study seeks to understand how and why the poorest face constraints in gaining access to public services and entitlements, and why the ultra poor children discontinue regular schooling and drop out from primary education. Built on a mixed method approach, the study identifies a number of important mechanisms through which the poorest are excluded from their entitlements. There are a number of mediating processes through which they are included, but allegedly often in the elites’ terms and conditions. Besides, the study highlights a number of critical factors that force children to discontinue schooling.
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    An assessment of the social mobilization and accountable local governance towards creating MDG union’s project
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2013-03) Chodhuary, Shuburna; Islam, Md. Akramul; Akther, Jesmin
    Community Empowerment Programme of BRAC and The Hunger Project Bangladesh jointly embraces a participatory approach towards creating Millennium Development Goal unions in Mymensingh district. The study aimed to assess the achievement of this project. A quasi-experimental design including pre-test and post-test surveys was used to assess the achievement of the project. Both quantitative and qualitative techniques were used. A total of 2,007 households in experimental and 1,963 households in control areas were surveyed. Besides, to compare the findings with baseline data were extracted from 1,971 households in baseline. The findings reveal that in experimental areas households were performing better than those in control and baseline areas particularly in children (6-10 years) enrollment rate in primary education, adult literacy rate, knowledge on HIV/AIDS, childhood immunization rate, safe water, sanitary latrine facility and participation in training in income generating activities. However, there are still some challenges which needed to be addressed such as treatment-seeking behaviour during pregnancy, birth registration, and common people satisfaction on local government. Thus, the project should emphasize the above mentioned issues to achieve the objectives of project.
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    Evaluation of multipurpose community learning centres of BRAC in rural areas in Bangladesh
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2013-05) Ahmad, Alia; Ferdousei, Papia
    BRAC, the largest NGO in the world, is involved in various educational programmes as part of its general strategy of poverty reduction. Post-primary Basic and Continuing Education (PACE) is one of the major components of BRAC Education Programme (BEP). PACE interventions was started in 2001 for capacity development and improvement in teaching-learning in rural non-government secondary schools. PACE has two components – Post-primary Basic Education (PBEn) and Continuing Education (CE). The CE programme was started in 1995 with Multi-purpose Community Learning Centres (MCLC) of BRAC, locally known as Gonokendro, to provide access to reading and literacy materials to rural communities.
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    Classroom situation at primary level
    (BRAC Research and Evaluation Division (RED), 2003-06) Hossain, Altaf; Imam, Syeda Rumnaz; Amin, Md. Nurul; Rahman, Tanzina; Ghosh, Sanat K.
    In the recent past Bangladesh has achieved considerable improvement in enrolment, attendance and school completion rate but little success has been wrought in improving the quality of education. There are many primary school systems in Bangladesh that provide primary education to the children of 5 to 10 years of age using different curriculum and administrative structures. The variety of offered primary education, aimed at eradicating illiteracy, is appreciable if the quality of education remains above an acceptable level. But some recent studies indicate that the quality of primary education is not up to the mark for some school systems and variations among the systems are glaringly obvious. This low level of performance may be due to a number of internal and external factors including classroom culture and the administration process of the relevant school system. As learning takes place in a classroom and as the teachers are the hubs of all the classroom activities, these case studies intended to delve into the matter to improve understanding of the factors responsible for differences in performance in different school systems. It is obviously easier to conjure up and blame the different curriculums of the various school systems as the main culprit for the differences in performance. However, the real causes of substandard performance and possible explanations of the differences can only be identified through classroom observation.