In 2024, 88.4% of Bangladeshi children took part in organised learning in the year before the official primary entry age. In 2010 the figure was 33.6%, and in 2009 it was 27.7%.
33.6% → 88.4%
Children in organised learning one year before primary entry age, 2010 and 2024 (SDG indicator 4.2.2).
The indicator counts pre-primary and early-learning programmes in the year before a child is due to start school, and it is one of the measures the UN uses to track SDG target 4.2 on early childhood development. The UN database holds Bangladesh values for only four years (2009, 2010, 2023 and 2024), so the path between 2010 and 2023 cannot be seen.
The latest year also shows a sex gap that favours girls: 92.0% of girls against 85.0% of boys in 2024. In 2023 the gap ran the other way, at 93.8% for girls and 95.5% for boys, and the overall rate was 94.6%. The fall of 6.2 percentage points between 2023 and 2024 comes from country-submitted data, and the source does not explain it; it may reflect a change in the underlying counts as much as a real change in attendance, so the 2023–2024 movement should be read with care.
Even so, a large majority of children now have some organised learning before Grade 1. For policy, the question shifts from reach to quality and equity: what children learn in those programmes, and why boys appear to be missing out in the latest year, which household and administrative data would need to show.
Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, via the UN SDG Global Database (series SE_PRE_PARTN), data extracted February 2026.