This report presents findings from thefirst ever comprehensive survey to document the incidenceand quality of secondary madrasas in Bangladesh. Analysisalso draws upon other publicly available administrative andhousehold level datasets. Currently the authors have verylittle information on school quality in general due to nonational learning assessment system and because schools fromdifferent streams are tested under different Boards. Thus itis always important to examine the quality of aided madrasasrelative to aided secular schools. The report highlights newchallenges: while gender equality in access has beenachieved in both schools and madrasas, girls remainsystematically disadvantaged in terms of learning outcomes.The female learning penalty remain is particularlypronounced in case of madrasas. Overall, the quality ofmathematics and English learning is low in madrasas, butperformance of students of mainstream schools is alsounsatisfactory average quality remains poor across the rangeof rural institutions. Overall, this report represents anempirically grounded investigation into the hithertoundocumented changes Bangladesh has witnessed in thesecondary madrasa school sector in the past two decades.Based on their analysis, the authors suggest a range ofpolicy initiatives that cover the entire secondary educationsector, not just the madarasa education. Given the wealth ofdata collected on secondary institutions and householdsduring the survey, this report only represents the first ofa series of rigorous empirical research and analysis whichwill be undertaken. It is hoped that the report will providean impetus towards an evidence-based policy debate onmadrasas and other critical issues in the education sector.
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