Attracting and Retaining Underprivileged Students
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                                                                                                           May 8, 2012




 The Case of Secondary Education Stipends Program In Bangladesh


Overview
From its inception in 2008, an innovative project backed by the World Bank has provided over
two million targeted stipends for secondary education in Bangladesh, 60 percent of which are
provided for girls’ education. This stipend program was targeted to poorer students and has
resulted in a 20 percentage point increase in retention rates overall and a rise of around 24
percentage points for girls and boys from the poorest households.


Challenge                                                 MULTIMEDIA
Bangladesh pioneered the use of conditional               Bangladesh Multimedia
cash transfers for girls’ education with the
launch of the Female Secondary School
Assistance Program in the early 1990s. This
initiative led to a fourfold increase in female schooling,            More Results
reversing the pronounced gender-gap (the female-to-male
ratio was then 120:1) within a decade. However, it was still
difficult for children from low-income families, especially

                                                                        38%
boys, to have access to an education and there were
growing concerns about low learning achievements and high
dropout rates for both boys and girls (particularly for the
                                                                      of poor children now enrolled in
poor). Building on the success of the earlier interventions           secondary school, up from 30%
and to address the remaining challenges, the Government of
Bangladesh launched the Secondary Education Quality and
Access Enhancement Project (SEQAEP) in 2008, with the
support of the International Development Association (IDA).
The project has been implemented in 122 Upazilas
(subdistricts) of Bangladesh, benefitting more than 2 million
                                                                        2.1
students and teachers in about 7,000 secondary schools.
                                                                        million
Approach                                                                students have benefitted from
                                                                        the program
SEQAEP focuses on two key interventions: Firstly, proxy
means testing-targeted stipends and tuition to economically
poor girls and boys, and secondly, quality-enhancing
incentives to students, teachers, and schools. Bangladesh is            MORE INFORMATION
one of the first in the region to adopt a rigorous and                    Project Documents
transparent targeting mechanism to identify poor
                                                                          Bangladesh Country Site
beneficiaries on a large scale. It is a method that generates
welfare scores for applicants based on a set of observable                End Poverty in South Asia Blog
household characteristics. Students eligible for the stipend              Connect with us on Facebook
receive from $20-to-$40 a year, depending on grade, and
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benefits are conditional on students maintaining 75 percent
average attendance, receiving a passing grade in final
examinations, and remaining unmarried until they complete
Grade 10. These education compliance criteria for each
student are confirmed every six months and funds are
provided to individual student bank accounts.

Results
Some positive results of SEQAEP are already visible in 2011 through independent impact
assessment. These include:
-The share of poor children in total secondary enrolment has increased from 30 percent to 38
percent;
-SEQAEP benefits about 2.1 million students, 54 percent of them girls, out of the four million
girls and 3.5 million boys attending secondary school in Bangladesh;
-Net impact on secondary schooling enrolment due to stipends is twenty percentage point
increase. The effects are higher among children from poor families, particularly for boys;
-The ratio of male-to-female students in project areas has improved by three percentage
points in three years (from 0.82 in 2008 to 0.85 in 2011);
-Secondary school graduation rate (measured as the percentage of Grade 6 entrants passing
Grade 10 exams) has climbed from 30 percent to 39 percent;
-Some 800,000 students have been benefitted through performance-based monetary
incentives, additional classes in English and Mathematics, and the Reading Habit Program.

Voices


     By the time I reached Class 9 all four of us siblings were in
   secondary school. It would have been impossible for my father, a
   farmer, to have paid our tuitions had it not been for the stipend.

                                                              — Parvin, Mother



Bank Contribution
SEQAEP financing consists of IDA support of $130 million and government funding of $25
million.
Partners
IDA and the Asian Development Bank are the only active donors in the secondary education
sector of Bangladesh. However, SEQAEP is supported only by IDA financing in conjunction
with the government funds. The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, under the
Ministry of Education, is the principal implementing agency.

Toward the Future
At present, SEQAEP is active across one-third of Bangladesh. The SEQAEP experience and
results are expected to contribute to more effective and systematic targeting of the poor, and
the approach itself is likely to be replicated nationally.