Parental Aspiration for Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Bangladesh

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Wednesday III)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Parent engagement and home-based early childhood interventions

Proposal

In Bangladesh, parental aspiration is the core driving strengths for Early Childhood Education (ECE) services. Family socio-economic characteristics are very imperative bases of early childhood educational achievement, particularly in the early stages of schooling before the primary school. Achieving sustainable educational development for all is required to increase efforts especially for vulnerable, poor, indigenous with special need children in rural areas. Globally children participated in Early Childhood Education (ECE) in the year prior to official entry age for primary school is very low while the government capacity to ensure enrollment at the early age and privatization of schooling. Parental aspiration is the core driving strengths for Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Bangladesh where parental socioeconomic characteristics are very imperious for lifelong educational achievement. Previous studies often pay little attention to family contingent variables, treating them as exogenous controls. This study focuses on parental aspirations with an eye toward socio-economic settings based on social justice and social stratification theory for schooling in Bangladesh among regions to achieve sustainable development in Education.

The research question of this study is focused on parental aspiration for children Early Childhood Education choose, school enrollment and readiness of children for Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Bangladesh based on social justice and social stratification theory. This study concentration on parental aspirations with an eye toward socio-economic settings of households with the social justice and social stratification theory for schooling in Bangladesh. In line with the theories, this study regarding Early Childhood Education (ECE) is analyzed the different level of parental aspirations among the rural and urban settings in Bangladesh. The rationale of parental aspiration for children school choice is an anxiety, persistent socioeconomic disparities for enrollment and school readiness in Bangladesh. Although government prearranged policies for the children education based on the theory of Social Justice.

This qualitative study is conducted focused on the case study method which is exploratory in nature. This study is followed triangulation to analyze data using households’ and ECE teachers interview, and Focused Group Discussions (FGD), and document analysis. In this study, the multiple case study was selected based on the types of institution in ECE to understand the phenomenon and context to be clearly evident.

Data were collected from the high achieving school and low achieving school in consultation with the education officer of the concern division in Bangladesh. Each School will serve as the three types of social class people especially the low, middle and high-income group of households. Multiple cases were developed based on the types of institution to get the real pictures among the cross-case analysis and to compare the phenomena of parental aspiration for Early Childhood Education in Bangladesh. This study followed an in-depth examination for parental aspiration and phenomena of the Early Childhood Education edges which containing review of documents, visits to schools, interviews with households and stakeholders (head teacher, education officials) and focus group discussions.

This study reveals, indirect cost impeding parental aspiration of school choice especially among middle-income group people and in the rural areas where the community engagement is identically low. The local socio-economic conditions, local labor market opportunities, and community preferences are also influencing the school choice of households. This study finds that the parental (father and mother) has a distinctive aspiration for child schooling. Parents send their children to the private school and private tutoring but the quality is not good even they never discuss the issues with the teacher about child educational development or school readiness. The non-required educational expenses are assumed for the non-enrollment of children especially in the urban areas where the rural areas have the limit possibilities of enrollment. This study exposes that the quality of ECE services and types among rural and urban areas remains patchy where the parental aspirations are playing the foremost role for Early Childhood Education (ECE) in Bangladesh.

Author

• Md Jahangir Alam, Doctoral Candidate, Kobe University