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The State of Education in Urban Slums of Bangladesh

Nazmeen (17), a mother of an 8-month old child, works at three different apartments in Mohammadpur as a housemaid. Married off at the tender age of 15, she had never completed her schooling and had to take on the heavy burden of motherhood, even before she herself could grow up. Although the odds were against her, Kohinoor was determined to protect her daughter from suffering the same fate as hers.

Nazmeen’s story is, unfortunately, not unique—thousands of young adolescents living in urban slums across Bangladesh share her fate. Slum households have a primary school enrolment rate of only 77.2%—significantly lower than the national level statistics of 97.7%. This indicates that the financial vulnerability of slum households translates to low enrolment.

Data taken from “Socio-Economics of Slum Dwellers: A Situation Analysis” by Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC

According to a baseline study conducted by the Research and Evaluation Division of BRAC, enrolment numbers suffer a drastic drop as the age group of the children in consideration increases—from 69% (for 10-14 years old) to 25% (for 15 and 19 years old), indicating alarmingly high dropout rates among school-going adolescents in the urban slums.

Data taken from “Socio-Economics of Slum Dwellers: A Situation Analysis” by Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC

Among numerous reasons contributing to this high rate of dropout, one of the noteworthy reasons is early marriage. Research findings show a strong negative correlation between child marriage among the adolescents aged 15-19 years and their school enrolment rate. This tells us that child marriage can be the reason for school dropout, and school dropout might be the reason for getting married before the age of 18. Providing basic education and some level of vocational training for entering the labour force may act as a deterrent for the incidence of child marriages in urban slums.

Frequent migration may also be contributing to higher dropout among children and adolescents. This is evident from the fact that school enrollment rate at the primary level is around 85% for the households that are living in current slums for more than 6 years, while the corresponding rate is 68% among those that are living for less than a year in the current slum.

Data taken from “Socio-Economics of Slum Dwellers: A Situation Analysis” by Research and Evaluation Division, BRAC

Zarine Anan Khondoker is a Communications Officer at BRAC Institute of Governance and Development, BRAC University. 

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