The educational landscape of Bangladesh is facing several challenges, among these low levels of equality and significant wealth concentration, which result in large education disparities, especially among marginalised groups. Patriarchal norms and high levels of child marriage further challenge girls’ access to schools.

The national budget for education has dwindled and remains under 2 pct. of the country’s GDP or 11 pct. of the total national budget, while other factors like resource scarcity, poor infrastructure, and political instability limits the improvements of educational quality. Here Bangladeshi CSO’s play an important role in advocating for marginalised communities and advancing improved education. 

Building on the lessons learned of the previous phase of the e!quality 2.0 project will continue to work towards a resilient, inclusive, and future-ready education system.  The ultimate objective of e!quality 2.0 is to build an inclusive, responsive education system for marginalised communities. The project is aiming to build an environment of evidence-based decision-making, a collaborative learning culture, and empowering change agents. To achieve this, the project will work through three levels:

1. Transforming evidence into actionable insights: 

Through monitoring policy commitments and budgets, assessments of educational policies, and raising awareness, the project intends to enhance transparency and accountability to target the gap between the community and education system. These measures aim at generating a wide range of evidence for decision making to guide policy decisions.

The project will specifically target the decline in community involvement and the rise of state regulation by promoting evidence-based decision-making and social accountability through data-collection and promoting productive engagements between communities and authorities. 

2. Enhancing the capacity of change agents and service providers: 

In order to boost system resilience and social inclusion, the project aims to enhance the capacity of youth champions and initiate youth-led accountability initiatives through trainings and mentorship. These will become change drivers capable of mobilising communities, negotiating with policymakers, creating effective action plans, and all in all lead effective policy mobilisation and facilitation.

To take on gaps of equality, and socio-economic and cultural disparities that limits access to quality education for marginalised communities, the project will prioritise gender equality and social inclusion, challenging patriarchal norms and gender roles in the capacity building of young people. 

3. Promoting a collaborative learning culture:

To combat issues of access, equality, and budget transparency, the project will organise advocacy events, policy dialogues, and the creation of an online learning platform. By creating a learning-focused environment and activities the project will promote sustainable social accountability.

Finally, the e!quality 2.0 project will target the national and local education budgets through its Social Audit and Citizen Report, while advancing collaborative learning culture for sustained social accountability. 

The sustainability of the project involves mainstreaming project outcomes into ongoing partner programs, establishing a Learning Collaborative for advocacy, strengthening partnerships for enduring learning, utilising proven policy advocacy models, documenting activities for a broader learning culture, and fostering community responsibility for policy accountability and transparency – all to ensure the longevity of the changes made beyond the project phase.

The first phase of the ‘E!quality’ project was carried out from March 2022 - August 2024 . The current project is part of the EOL extension phase of 2024-2026. Read more about the first phase of the project here.