Efforts Towards Education: Looking into Non-Government Support for Non-Formal Education in Bangladesh

A substantial portion of the population in Bangladesh as well as around the world suffers due to exclusion from a fundamental right—education. Recent data show an alarming trend of half of the children and adolescents worldwide missing minimum standards of reading and numeracy. Numerous factors, including geographical location, infrastructure, gender issues and others, shape such discrimination. Not only children and adolescents but also the youths and adults comprise a significant proportion of this exclusion. Keeping these issues under consideration, measures are taken by the countries, organizations and institutions to address this global phenomenon. Recent major initiatives like ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ include prioritizing the matter through targeting to ensure basic and technical education and expand the scope for income generation. In Bangladesh, education is a fundamental constitutional right. The current policies and institutional set-ups have attempted to ensure access to education for all classes of people. The available data indicate that the country has experienced a long leap in literacy rate from 29.23 per cent (1981) to 72.76 per cent (2016) within three decades. The trend of budgetary allocations by the government for this sector over time is also on the rise. Nevertheless, like other developing countries worldwide, the government here find itself confined in different ways while confronting the issue, as the concerned sector has deficiencies in innovative and integrated educational approaches, job-oriented syllabuses, required facilities (like ICT arrangements) and others. Such factors create a gap in the demand–supply scenario. More than that, all sections of the people are not under the purview of formal education. That is why non-formal education is essential as an alternative learning avenue for the vast majority of children, youths and adults who do not have access to formal schools. With a view to filling the aforesaid gap, the non-government sector (non-governmental organizations [NGOs], civil society organizations, donor agencies, etc.) extend supportive hands in this sector. Several national and international organizations are cooperating with the government by playing independent, active and collective roles to ensure access to education for the excluded groups of people. These supports are being provided in the forms of financing under government projects, bilateral grants, own projects by the organizations and others. Coordinated efforts by all these entities have been yielding some positive outcomes for the field. This write-up visits the aforementioned domain of non-governmental supports for non-formal education in Bangladesh and attempts to find the path towards a better state of education that is accessible to excluded segments of the population.