Is Public Provisioning of Secondary Education Equity Enhancing? A Case Study in Bangladesh

In recent years, the secondary education sector of Bangladesh is credited for its increasing enrolment rate and gender parity. Major debates in this sector are revolving around quality of education and high dropout rate. However, the problematic government school provisioning system in promoting equity is limited in education policy discourse. This paper argues that while direct Government education provisioning through government schools are supposed to address the existing inequality of opportunity in secondary education sector, the Government provisioning itself creating inequity in access to education. Using the case study method, the paper tried to provide insight on different secondary school provisioning system in one (i.e., Tangail Sadar Upazila) of the 490 administrative units of Bangladesh. Based on the primary and secondary data of the six carefully selected schools of the administrative unit, the study assess the difference among the three types of schools (Government, Non-government MPO and Non-government Private) in terms of resources, academic performance, administration etc. Following that, the paper tried to validate its argument by analysing differential access of students from different socio-economic background to difference provisioning system. The reveals that limited number of Government schools with limited seat capacity and better educational resources/capacity are serving the need of financially well off segment of urban population. Government is trying to address the education need of rest of the population through subsidizing (MPO provisioning) Non-government schools expense and project based stipend system. With limited resources and capacity, MPO and private schools have become resort of less privileged segment of population. While these segment of population afford less, they pay the more to get less quality education. Following the human capability approach, while state could expand its direct provisioning for less privileged population, state excluded them from its direct provisioning system. Instead of offering government resources to less privilege class for promoting their equal footing, government exacerbating the exiting inequality through promoting inequity of opportunity in the government provisioning system. Inaccessibility to limited government school provisioning is limiting the window of opportunity of those population who already have limited opportunity.