Cheers for every University going students of Bangladesh

The moment a student walks into the University to study, the university opens up the doors of unlimited study materials. He goes to his area of specialization and starts building his knowledge growth on that area and the lecturer guides him along the way. Can we give the student more? How about bringing the internet to him? How about ensuring that his access to the internet is guaranteed? What policy maker can do for this student? I will write more on this in my posting later sometime. In this posting I would like to acknowledge the achievement done by every University going students in Bangladesh.

Let me give you a little bit back ground of our education ladder and how our children climb up to the University. Based on 2005 statistics from BANBEIS (http://www.banbeis.gov.bd/), in primary education level, net enrolment rate of children from age 6-10 is 87%. Outstanding job! Congratulation Bangladesh! You showed you can do it and we are proud of this achievement.

In 2005, we had a population of (170 lac) 17 million children of that age group (6-10) and 87% of them enrolled in primary education. I know you may have questions about quality of education, end of the year how many remain, etc. These are valid questions; but I will take a moment just to enjoy the enrolment success. This is a huge step. If it continues we will pull our literacy rate from 45% to 87% within this generation.

Now the nest step is to keep them in the school. We loose 50% of these kids at the end of fifth Grade, which has an enrolment of 2.6 million. That is a very big loss. We have to do a socio-economic research to identify the root cause of these losses. I intend to write my thought about it in near future. The similar trend is followed in secondary schools, 50% drop outs until they reach to tenth grade, 2 million in 6th grade down to 1 million in 10th grade. Total enrolment of secondary education age group is little more than (70 lac) 7 million.

Based on 2005 BANBEIS data, total number of students studying among 74 universities (21 public and 53 private) 207577; about 24% are female 49867. 1st year University students may be 52 to 70 thousand, which accounted for 5% of the students of the 10th grade. My forecast at this rate by the end of year 2009, we will have 359646 (35 Lac) in University enrollment.

Now to summarize the education ladder fall offs (or should I say climb up!), in 2005 we have more then 44 lac students enrolled in 1st grade and in the same year in Bangladesh we have around little more than 50 thousand enrolled in any University in Bangladesh. Each of the students in any University in Bangladesh came from a thousand of kids going to 1st grade.
I waited few minutes to think about, “what should write next?” It is a catastrophic loss. 99 students who enrolled in 1st grade fall off to the path to University. On the other hand I have one student who is out of 100. Outstanding! I would say cheers for any student in any University in Bangladesh, no matter what; you are one in a thousand! Celebrate!!