Bangladesh got its children into school — now it is losing its boys before they finish

Introduction

Bangladesh’s schools have changed beyond recognition in a generation. In 2010, about 61 of every 100 children reached the end of primary school on time or later; in 2024 the figure was 94.¹ But the next step up is where the system now leaks, and it leaks unevenly. In 2024 the lower-secondary completion rate was 84.7% for girls and 63.9% for boys, a gap of 21 percentage points.²³

84.7% vs 63.9%

Lower-secondary completion rate for girls and boys, 2024 (UNESCO Institute for Statistics).

The country’s long-celebrated gender gap in schooling, in which girls were the ones left behind, has not just closed; for completion, it has reversed. This article sets out what the official education data show about that reversal, about how far the system still falls short on learning, and what the numbers cannot yet explain.

A note on the data: all figures are UNESCO Institute for Statistics series published through the World Bank. Completion rates are calculated from administrative enrolment records and population estimates, and can exceed 100% when over-age pupils are counted; out-of-school rates are survey-and-estimate based. Year-to-year swings, especially in the out-of-school series, should be read with caution.

More children finish each stage than in 2010

Every rung of the ladder is higher than in 2010. Primary completion rose from 60.9% to 94.3%. Lower-secondary completion rose from 51.7% to 73.8%, and gross enrolment in secondary school from 49.5% to 64.3%.¹⁴⁵ At the top, tertiary gross enrolment rose from 13.3% in 2011 to 23.7% in 2024.⁶

Two features stand out. First, the rates fall at each step: the lower-secondary completion rate (73.8%) is well below the primary rate (94.3%), and only about a quarter of the relevant age group is enrolled in tertiary education.⁴⁶ Second, progress has flattened recently. Secondary gross enrolment peaked at 67.0% in 2022 and has slipped to 64.3%; tertiary enrolment has hovered between 23.5% and 24.2% since 2021.⁵⁶

Girls are finishing; boys are not

In 2000 girls were already slightly ahead in lower-secondary completion (55.0% against 48.7% for boys). The gap then widened. In 2010 the rates were 56.1% and 47.4%; by 2021 girls stood at 91.4% and boys at 62.0%; in 2024 the figures were 84.7% and 63.9%.²³

Girls’ completion has risen far faster than boys’: boys are up 16.5 points since 2010, against 28.6 for girls.²³

The out-of-school figures tell the same story in a different form.

In 2024, an estimated 34.1% of boys of lower-secondary age were out of school, against 12.8% of girls. In 2010 the shares were 33.2% and 27.0%.⁷⁸ The girls’ share has more than halved over fourteen years; the boys’ has not moved. The overall rate for the age group was 23.9% in 2024.⁹

The out-of-school series is irregular: it has a gap between 2010 and 2017 and an unusually low girls’ value in 2017 (1.7%), so the exact path matters less than the 2024 comparison, which is consistent with the completion data above.⁷

Why boys? What the data cannot say

None of the sources used here explains why boys leave. The data are silent on causes, and this article does not claim one. The most commonly discussed hypotheses, such as boys leaving to work, or incentives that have been aimed at girls, are questions for household surveys and evaluation studies, not for these indicators. They deserve testing rather than assumption.

What the numbers do show is that a policy lens built around girls’ disadvantage no longer fits lower secondary. Equity now requires looking at both sexes, and at the poorest households, rural areas and other groups that these headline series do not break out.

Staying in school is not the same as learning

The World Bank’s “learning poverty” measure counts children who are out of school at the end-of-primary age or cannot read and understand a short age-appropriate text. For Bangladesh it was 51.2% in 2022: roughly half of ten-year-olds.¹⁰ The estimate was 49.1% for girls and 54.2% for boys.¹¹¹² There is only one data point, so no trend can be drawn.

Inputs to quality are thin. Government spending on education was 2.03% of GDP in 2024 and has stayed near 2% for a quarter of a century.¹³ Only 55.0% of secondary teachers were trained in 2024, down from 65.0% in 2023 and a peak of 66.5% in 2017.¹⁴ The 2024 drop is large enough to suggest a change in definition or reporting as much as a real fall, and should be verified with the Ministry of Education before being cited as a trend.

What it will take

The data point to where the system is weakest. The options below are priorities for investigation and policy, not proven fixes:

• Track boys’ dropout directly. Collect and publish dropout by sex, grade, district and household income at the end of primary and during lower secondary, so causes can be separated from guesses.
• Evaluate incentives for both sexes. Test whether stipends, school meals or conditional support designed for girls could be adapted, and measure the effect on boys’ completion before scaling.
• Link schooling to learning. Make a national reading and numeracy assessment, with results by sex, a regular part of reporting, so that completion is not mistaken for learning.
• Strengthen teacher quality. Verify the 2024 fall in trained secondary teachers, and if it is real, treat teacher training as a priority.
• Raise and protect the education budget. At about 2% of GDP, there is little room to improve quality while also extending places; a published target would anchor the debate.
• Prepare for the next step. With about a quarter of the age group in tertiary education, align skills and vocational pathways with the labour market for those who leave school earlier.