The World Bank (WB) will provide $30 crore or around Tk 3,300 crore loan for the development of the secondary education to help Bangladesh recover from learning losses incurred during the COVID-19 pandemic, introduce complementary online learning blended with in-class education for students to build system resilience, improve learning outcomes and teaching quality, and reduce the dropout rate in secondary education. 

The money will be expensed under a project titled ‘E-Learning Acceleration in Secondary Education (LAISE) Operation.’

Abdoulaye Seck, World Bank Country Director for Bangladesh and Bhutan said, “Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in education over the years and was among the first few developing countries to achieve gender parity in lower secondary school. But the prolonged school closure during the COVID-19 pandemic has had a profoundly negative impact on learning and forced many poor girls to leave school.”

The LAISE Operation will support the government’s Secondary Education Programme. To accelerate learning, the program will have a focus on core subjects such as mathematics, English and Bangla for grades 6 and 8, as these are foundational for future learning.

It aims to increase the proficiency of Grade 8 students in mathematics to 65 per cent from the current 28 per cent and Bangla to 90 per cent from 66 per cent.

To reduce dropout rates, the programme will provide stipends to 8 million students and ensure that 5,000 institutions have active sexual harassment and prevention committees in place.

Further, about 7,200 schools will have programmes to improve reading proficiency, and 15,000 teachers will receive training to improve their teaching skills.

The programme will also support mental health counselling and help prevent gender-based violence in at least 30 per cent of targeted schools, added the release.

Bd-pratidin English/Golam Rosul