Corruption and Education Inequalities in Bangladesh

...

Corruption also affects education, corruption is present between the students, the parents but also the administration by the payment of bribes and other extortions. Corruption seriously threatens the integrity and reliability of modes of certification of education, inducing scepticism about the validity of the results and the suspicion about the reality of performance. Thus, these scourges degrade the entire educational system. But the educational system is also at the origin of many inequalities.

In the second part, this essay will focus on the education problem and inequalities that it creates. First of all, the education system in this country is one of the largest among the developing countries with nearly 18 millions of children in primary education and 11 million in secondary education. Education in Bangladesh is free for children between 6 to 10 years old and they are obliged to go to school. Over the past decade, the enrolment rate in primary education has improved however the quality of education is not very good. It was on their behalf that the Awami League imposed Bengali as a national language and as the language of public education. This resulted in a large number of ill-educated graduates since the knowledge required for their education was not available in Bengali. Also, infrastructures are outdated: lack of ventilation, light, and sanitary. The pressure from external factors, such as child labor or also early marriage, have resulted in high drop-out rates and a low level of literacy, only 57,7% in 2012 (UNICEF, 2012). Also, children-workers, children with disabilities, indigenous children rarely have access to school. Their right to education is therefore not respected.

At the secondary level, poverty is a real barrier to education. Registrations fees are very high and all the additional expenses related to transports, uniforms, books or to private courses constitutes a dissuasive factor to schooling. Anglophone private schools attract rich children’s, which gave them access to much better jobs. This contributes to the growing of inequality in the country. Also, there are huge inequalities between genders in Bangladesh. Women do not have the same access to education as men. However, education is a human right indispensable to economic and social progress. Women should be given the right to universal and equal access to education as a central element for achieving the objectives of gender equality.

There are various government scholarship programs and donor support actions, but there is no coherent education policy or the development of secondary education in Bangladesh. International organizations, government and also other agencies and communities should solve education issue and this is what we will study in the third part.

The third part of this essay will explain the solutions implemented in order to solve the problem of education and corruption in Bangladesh. First of all, concerning education, universal primary education is one of the achievable Millennium Development Goal and the government has adopted a strategy to deal with it. The current share of public expenditure on education is 16%, one of the highest in the region of South Asia. In 2003, the Government made a commitment to invest more in the system of primary education and, with the cooperation of eleven partners, including the European Commission, they created the Second Primary Education Development Program (PEDP II) in order to provide a better primary education but also to create a better environment for children. Bangladesh received nearly €1,7 billion of the European Commission. This help was at first more centered on providing basis health and education services and finally, interventions have expanded to include social, economic and governance aspects.

Education is one of the main factors in the fight against poverty because it enables the population to improve its social, cultural and economic situation and to increase economic growth. The access to a quality vocational training, a better transition between school and work and the offer of decent jobs are also a factor of a sustainable reduction of poverty. The overall objective of education is to help Bangladesh to create a more integrated and a better quality education system. The European Commission assistance in the three sectors of education (formal primary education, informal education and secondary education), will help Bangladesh to develop a more coherent and effective system.

As part of this strategy, the support for the primary and secondary sector of education is complemented by the Erasmus Mundus program, which aims to strengthen the capacities of universities and higher education with academic cooperation and mobility.

Furthermore, many NGOs such as BRAC which aims to put an end to poverty by empowering poor people and also Care International fighting against gender inequality and poverty, are joining forces to support the Bangladeshi government with the goal of achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) by 2015.

Secondly, concerning corruption, successive governments have taken only limited measures to fight against corruption, which remains a major obstacle to good governance in Bangladesh. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) created in November 2004 has set up investigations and preventions to get rid of the phenomenon. However, the first attempts of the CCA faced difficulties; legal and organizational problems concerning its political and financial independence. Given the large number of cases to be examined (nearly 17,000 cases transmitted only by the Bureau of Anti-Corruption ), it is important that the CAC act as soon as possible to gain more credibility.

The signature of the Convention of United Nations against the corruption also demonstrates the importance of Bangladesh's determination to fight against this problem.

Also, since 1996, The non-governmental organization Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) establish solutions to eliminate corruption in the country by acting on a national and local scale. At the local scale, the organization appeals to the citizens of the country with 45 volunteer groups creating the Committees of Concerned Citizens (CCC). The CCC mobilize citizens in order to fight against corruption by setting up a better governance. The volunteers of this movement, mostly student and young people, are fighting against the idea that corruption is a way of life. This solution strengthens the social movements and allows the populations to be actors of the fight against corruption in the side of the government instead of undergoing it. Therefore, the inhabitants contribute to eliminate inequalities.

To conclude, we saw through this study that Bangladesh is a typical case of a