Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Strategies for the Education Sector

SOAS-ACE’s earlier work on the public sector primary education in Bangladesh showed limited scope for feasible reforms based on exploiting horizontal checks. The public education sector in Bangladesh is highly centralized and the governance challenges affect all schools under the system more or less equally. Small variations in horizontal checks across state schools appear insufficient to generate any observable reductions in corruption.

In this extension of the research, we look at low-fee private schools and madrassas of different types in the same catchment areas where we studied the state schools. There is a public perception that non-state schools, whether madrassas or private schools, may paradoxically enjoy a greater sense of ownership by the local communities that select these schools. It may therefore be that horizontal checks and educational outcomes are better in the same localities for non-state schools.

The project will test this perception and analyse the implications. If horizontal checks are better in non-state schools this has important implications for the design of governance that can improve anti-corruption, create stronger incentives to use educational resources for the outcomes that were intended, and thereby improve educational outcomes.

SOAS-ACE is currently undertaking research in Bangladesh and Nigeria, including in the education, health and power sectors, as well as on successful collective action that overthrew a corrupt autocracy. Moving beyond pure research, we are also monitoring the implementation of anti-corruption strategies our research has recommended, such as a strategy to reduce pharmaceutical companies’ overpricing of medicines.

Our partner on this project is BIGD – BRAC University.