Education Program by Brac

With education programmes in six countries, BRAC has built the largest secular, private education system in the world, with over 700,000 students worldwide enrolled in BRAC primary schools. These schools are designed to give a second chance at learning to the disadvantaged students left behind out from the formal education systems.
Complementing mainstream school systems with innovative teaching methods and materials, BRAC’s education programmes open primary schools in communities unreached by formal education systems, bringing learning to millions of children, particularly those affected by extreme poverty, violence, displacement or discrimination. At the pre-primary level, we also target underprivileged children to prepare them for mainstream primary school entry.
At the secondary level, we provide need-based trainings, student mentoring initiatives, and e-learning materials to improve the mainstream secondary education system. We are giving increasing attention to adolescent and youth as a special group and offering life skills, livelihood and skills development training, as well as saving and financial services such as savings accounts. Our multipurpose community learning centres promote reading even to those who cannot move from their houses through mobile libraries. In our 26 years of history we have provided basic education to around 10 million students in Bangladesh, with graduates from our non formal primary schools numbering nearly five million.
A river of change
Currently, the primary school enrolment rate is over 90 per cent in Bangladesh.
However, there is a high dropout rate of approximately 30 per cent, most of which happens before reaching class five. The dropout rate is especially high in the schools situated in hard to reach areas, and amongst children from poor families, those with special needs, and ethinic minorities. To reduce the dropout rate in government primary schools,
BRAC’s pre primary schools graduates more than 360,000 students who are directly admitted to government schools, completing grade five on time. Following the success of the pre primary school operations by NGOs, the government decided to introduce the initiative in government primary schools. Our initiative has led to 90 per cent of students completing primary education with a pass rate of 99 per cent. To boost the attendance rate and reduce the dropout rate in high schools, BRAC has implemented mentoring programmes which involve students in extra curricular activities. While the standard teacher-student ratio is 1:45, the reality in many schools is
1:60, sometimes as bad as 1:150. In such instances, these difficult ratios are due to the lack of classrooms. Nevertheless, it is not possible for even the best teachers to provide a quality educational environment to such large numbers of children in one class. As such, BRAC is working to train teachers in classroom management, and also maintains a teacher-student ratio of
1:33 in BRAC pre-primary and primary schools. A major challenge for the government is providing an adequate learning environment in schools to ensure quality education. We took the initiative to train teachers and school management committees in rural areas on capacity building, and have so far trained around
37,000 high school teachers and more than 15,000 school management committees. As a result, we have seen significant improvements in these schools in achieving good results in board examinations. Life skills and education for adolescent girls is also another challenge. Their issues are not being addressed by any specific government ministry or policies and they have little or no access to education and livelihood skills. In response, BRAC has trained 36,000 adolescent girls in rural areas on livelihood development skills.