Families bear 71 percent of the country’s education expenses. Education is called the backbone of the nation. The more educated the nation is, the better it is. However, in Bangladesh, the family has to bear 71 percent of the cost of children’s education. The fees and expenses of NGOs or private schools are three times that of government institutions. In the case of private kindergartens, the amount of this expenditure is almost nine times.
The report titled ‘Global Education Monitoring Report 2022’ came up at a hotel in the capital on Tuesday. The report is based on Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Maldives, Iran, Pakistan, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka in South Asia. Nine organizations, including UNESCO, were involved in the preparation of the report.
According to the report, families bear 57 percent of the cost of education in Pakistan. In Nepal, household spending on pre-primary education is 63 percent, and technical and vocational education and training is 75 percent, while in government technical and vocational education and training is 8 percent. The trend of paying monthly fees to the top quarter households in the two major cities is four to eight times higher than that of the lower quarter households.
The top 20 percent of households in India spend nearly four times more on all types of government, privately funded, and unaided schools than the bottom 20 percent. In 2017 and 2018, families spent five times more on private-funded and unaided schools than on government schools.
According to the report, about 12 percent of households in South Asia save and 6 percent of households take loans to pay school fees. About one-third of households in Bangladesh take loans to pay for their children’s education in private polytechnics.
In Bhutan, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, government student loan programs have been taken to provide low-interest loans to those studying in non-state or private institutions. In Bangladesh, students protested against the increase in public university fees and the imposition of taxes on private university fees. As a result, some decisions were changed.
According to a survey conducted for the UNESCO report, out of 1,050 low-fee private schools in India, 1,000 schools depend only on fees.
On the other hand, teacher training institutes in Afghanistan, India, and Nepal see dependence on fees and lack of government funding as the main obstacles to the development of their programs.