Chapter 23: Improving Educational Achievement for Marginalized Children in Rural Bangladesh Via Non-Formal Education

Over the past two decades, Bangladesh has made considerable strides in expanding access to education, particularly at the primary level. According to the Bangladesh’s Department of Primary Education (DPE),¹ in 2011, net enrolment rates in grades 1–5 reached an all-time high of 98.7%, a 38.2 percentage point increase since 1990—the year that witnessed the birth of the global Education for All movement. The underlying drivers of this expansion in education access throughout the late 1990s into the early 2000s are multi-faced and deeply rooted in political incentives that educational planners faced as they sought to build a strong nation that unified Bangladesh politically, culturally and socially (Hossain, Subrahmanian, & Kabeer, 2002).