Female
Education in Bangladesh
 |
| A Bangladeshi Village Primary School |
Female education in Bangladesh was not satisfactory only some
years ago. But now the condition has improved to some extent, though not
satisfactorily. In 1974, the number of school-going children of the age-group
5-9 years was 2464 thousands.Of them 1454 thousand were boys and 1010 thousand
were girls. Where as in 1991,the total number of school-going children were
7212 thousand. Of this number, 3837 thousand were boys and 3375 thousand were
girls. These date show that the situation has improved.
If we consider secondary education, we see that in 1993-94 3008
thousand boys and 1876 thousand girls studied in this level. This situation
changed to 3448 thousand boys and 2841 thousand girls in 1997-98.
When female education is considered, levels higher than the
secondary level need not be considered. So we can say that we are in a hopeful
situation. However,
female education also includes women who have been given literacy by various
adult literacy programs. Thousands of women who were illiterate earlier have
received minimum literacy in the past few years. The activities of some NGOs
also play a part in this movement. We can hope that a time will come soon when
most women of our country will be at least literate, if not highly educated.
However,
if education means something related more to knowledge than to literacy, then
we can say that our women's education level has increased at least five fold on
an average as compared to the situation of 1974. Now they have health
education, hygiene education, pregnancy education, technical or professional
education, and so on. So we should be hopeful.
