Budget 2013-14: Caring for children

PRE-BUDGET consultation has already started, and there have been many interesting demands and responses by the finance minister afterwards. Business associations and civil society groups placed their long-standing demands. However, we did not come across any demand from the most critical part of the population, the children. Perhaps it is because they do not constitute a vote bank, which matters in politico-economic considerations and making fiscal decisions. Adequate, need-based and equitable public investment on the children is indeed instrumental toward sustainable growth and socio-economic development through increased supply of human capital. This is also likely to convey positive message to their voter guardians.

Children constitute about 62 million of the total population. This indicates that securing children's socio-economic rights are integral to Bangladesh's present and future economic and social development. The government is committed to children's development through formulating national policy documents and strategies and through signing of regional and international conventions.

The government is also committed to children's rights and development under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The Medium Term Budgetary Framework gave importance to children's education, health and nutrition, safe environment, drinking water and sanitation, child protection, and children's development through public investment in line with the Sixth Five-Year Plan.

Despite all these commitments, the gap in children's rights to equitable social services is significant. Poor children are deprived of basic social services. Around one-third of the primary school children cannot complete primary cycle. There is considerable geographical disparity in terms of education, infant and child mortality, immunisation and nutritional indicators. The most deprived children are living in urban slums and on the streets. This implies that there is a drawback in translating national budget into children's wellbeing.

The country has achieved substantial progress in increasing and sustaining net enrolment in primary schools from 85% in 2000 to 94% in 2010 and achieving gender parity in both primary and secondary school enrolment. Bangladesh is the only country in South Asia, after Sri Lanka, that has achieved gender parity in education.

Despite impressive progress, there are some unfinished and emerging inequities that must be dealt with to sustain past progress and put the country on the path of middle income growth with equity. For instance, the issues of quality of learning; attendance, retention and performance of children in primary and secondary schools; and disparities based on geographic locations are concerns for the government, development partners, parents and indeed all stakeholders.

Enrolment of children in pre-primary schooling, considered to be the foundation of and key to primary education, is dismally low with significant variation among geographical regions, between rural and urban, and between slums and non-slums within urban. Only about 13.42% of children aged 5 or older enrolled in pre-primary school in 2010, which means that about 2.56 million pre-school aged children are not enrolled in pre-primary schools. Net primary enrolment ratio was 94% in 2010, which implies that about 1.18 million children of 6-10 years old did not enroll in age specific appropriate grades. Of those enrolled, 33.8% (6.64 million) do not complete the full primary schooling cycle. About 52.6% (9.75 million) of secondary school age children dropped out in 2010.

Education gets the second largest allocation after public administration. But despite positive growth in national budget, the share of the education sector budget as per cent of the total budget is decreasing. The ratio of education budget to GDP has remained static at around 2% over the years. This means, education sector investment has been declining for the last four years in proportion to the overall national growth. In nominal terms, the size of the total budget, on average, grew annually at 28.7% while education budget increased at 20.1% per annum (except -0.13% growth in FY2011-12) between FY2008-09 to 2012-13.

Nominally, the per child education budget had been estimated at Tk. 2,898 in the provisional budget of FY2012-13, an increase by, on average, 10.7% per annum from actual expenditure of FY2009-10. Conversely, per capita national budget increased from Tk. 6,836 to Tk. 12,458 during this period. The average annual growth in per capita national budget was about 27.4% during this period. Also, the annual per capita national budget growth was higher than the per child national education budget during this period.

The government introduced some social safety net measures to mitigate the impact of poverty and other bottlenecks that hinder children from poor families and/or areas from enjoying the public investment. These, however, seem to be ineffective to reach the goal due to their inadequacy and lead to a very high opportunity cost. For example, the amount of primary stipend per student has remained same, Tk.100 per month for a single child and Tk. 125 for two children from the same family, over the ten years since inception in 2003.

As a result of inflation, the worth of the primary education stipend amount decreased substantially, as the real value of Tk. 100 in 2003 came down to Tk. 51 in 2012. The impact of the programme in terms of reducing dropout in primary schools remains questionable due to very high opportunity cost of schooling for children living in poverty. Thus, wealthier children are more likely to benefit from education investment due to inverse relationship between poverty and education.

This backdrop calls for a further look into the pattern of budget allocation and addressing the gaps in public investment. In particular, the following aspects require attention for the upcoming 2013-14 budget:

* Education budget should be increased at least proportionately as growth of national budget as per cent of GDP. Education budget per child should grow at least at the similar rate of per capita budget growth;

* Fiscal attention must be paid to increased coverage of pre-primary schooling, which is currently abysmal. The budgetary provisions for pre-school ($300 million over five years) in PEDP-3 should be implemented with attention to equity issues by ensuring effective coverage of children in vulnerable groups, like urban slums, remote locations and other marginalised populations;

* Special fiscal incentives have to be provided to attract and retain nearly 7 million dropout children at primary level. Budget for the projects on dropout and working children will have to be increased as per the National Education Policy and other national documents;

* Necessary fiscal adjustments are needed towards more efficient, effective safety net programmes in education, with attention to the deprivations of children and their families. For instance, budget on stipend for students with disabilities has to be reviewed upwards and needs to cover all children with disabilities;

* New schools (pre-school, primary and secondary) should be established in chars and haors and areas inhabited by ethnic minorities, with adequate safety net measures to sustain full completion;

* Special fiscal attention should be paid to the schooling of children engaged in child labour as the current budgetary allocation is far less than the requirement.

The writer is an Economist and Senior Research Fellow, Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies, Dhaka.
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