In Bangladesh, the majority of children aged five years and below have limited access to services that nurture their cognitive and psycho-social development. There are a number of programs run by Government, NGOs and faith-based organizations in the country, but not all provide a good combination of both the care and the early stimulation components. Poor socio-economic condition of the country is one of the root causes of this unwanted situation. Similarly, not all service providers in the health and education systems have the skills and resources for providing services related to early childhood care and education.
Recently, the government approved an Operational Framework for Preprimary Education to achieve EFA goals by 2015. Although the most recent Government plans include preschool classes in 80% of government schools by 2015, early childhood care and education has received insufficient attention so far. Due to severe budget and capacity constraints in this field, it has not been a government priority as of date.

Following the Regional Forum on Making the Case for Early Childhood in South Asia (Bangkok, 28-29 April 2008), the Bangladesh country team agreed to initiate a concrete follow-up with support from UNESCO Dhaka Office, to develop a financially underpinned scenario for the Government of Bangladesh to achieve EFA Goal 1: Expanding and improving comprehensive Early Childhood Care and Education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children.
Mr. Jan van Ravens, one of the resource speakers at the Regional Forum to share the experiences on costing ECCE in the Arab States, was called in to undertake a 3-4 weeks study in Bangladesh. A series of interviews was conducted with key stakeholders both from the relevant Ministries and from national and international NGOs. Policy documents and information were gathered on the existing provisions of ECCE services, e.g. in terms of the numbers of children and parents that were reached, the nature of the programs, and of course the costs of the teachers’ salaries, the learning materials, the space where classes and parent group sessions were held, and other cost items.
The next step was the development of a “simulation tool”. This is a file of the spreadsheet programme “Excel” in which policy makers, experts or practitioners can enter or alter programme characteristics or parameters such as the number of teaching hours per day, the group size, the teachers’ salary, the number of training days, etcetera. Based on demographic data (both at national and at regional level), the simulation tool then calculates the overall cost per year.
The “points of departure” for this study were of course Bangladesh’ aforementioned Operational Framework and EFA Goal One, but also the ‘4 Cornerstones” of the Consultative Group on ECCD. This policy statement promoted the idea of two years of focused preparation for entry in primary school, preceded by parenting programmes during the first four years of children’s lives.
Based on this policy perspective, on a population prognosis, and on a set of quality parameters, a concrete cost estimation was made in a draft report that was presented on 06 November 2008 through a Sharing Meeting to all those organizations that were consulted in the weeks before. The final version of the report has come out in mid December 2008 after compiling responses from these organizations. The final outcomes strongly indicates that by focusing on cost-effective modalities, it would actually be possible to reach the vulnerable and disadvantaged children in Bangladesh by allocating a relatively small part of the education budget, which expands continuously as a result of economic growth.

Please find the full report here :

EXPANDING ECCE IN BANGLADESH (480 kB)

BANGLADESH ECCE SIMULATION TOOL (28.5 kB)