core sector communique

More Disadvantaged Children having Access to Education under ROSC Project

 

 

The Reaching Out-of-School Children (ROSC) Project has brought more than half a million disadvantaged children to over 15,000 Ananda schools in the poorest upazilas of Bangladesh. These are the children who had missed out schooling at the right age or dropped out, mainly because of poverty. The Government had initiated this innovative project to bring these children back to school, along with support from the World Bank and Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC).

To bring additional disadvantage children back to school, the World Bank and SDC is now reviewing the Government’s proposal of scaling up the project. The project targets to support a total of 750,000 out of school children eventually.

The aim of ROSC is to reduce the number of out-of-school children through improved access, quality and efficiency in primary education. The project reaches out to the poorest and particularly female children, of 60 upazilas with high rates of poverty and low enrollment. The project will be expanded and scaled up to cover additional needy upazilas.

The project has substantially achieved its development objective by fulfilling seven out of eight key performance indicators. It has been found that the average student attendance rate is now above 90 percent, and student learning achievement in Bangla and Mathematics can be rated good, with 4 out of 5 children achieving the targeted learning levels.

The World Bank and Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC), have examined GOB’s proposal for an expansion and modest scaling-up of ROSC activities. Following the Government’s fulfillment of requirements for ensuring effective implementation, negotiations for Additional Financing for the project will begin.

Improvements in the quality of the education can be brought about through deeper engagement of all stakeholders and by enhancing social awareness and community mobilization for empowering the community. The innovative ROSC project will not only provide valuable lessons for Bangladesh but also for other countries where access to quality primary education continues to be a serious challenge.