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Slum children largely left out of schools

Staff Correspondent
Many SLUM children in urban areas are deprived from education due to poverty, lack of coordination between formal and non-formal education, insufficient opportunities and lack of government's cordialness Currently around 41.7 million people are living in urban areas, 28 percent of the total population of Bangladesh, said a report titled 'The State of the World's Children-2012' by UNICEF.
Around 18 percent of children in slums attended secondary school in Bangladesh. But no data were available about the slum children's enrolment at primary level, said the report.
However, a paper prepared for the 10th UKFIET (UK Forum for International Education and Training) Internationa] Conference on Education and Development, 2009, showed that the net primary enrolment rate was around 70 percent in Dhaka city's slums.
The prior problem of ensuring basic education for slum children is that slum populations are simply not recognised in the formation of policy or educational planning. For instance, there are no realistic estimates of how many school-aged children live in these areas, although the number is increasing rapidly.
The government may be reluctant to recognise slums fully because this would mean recognising its obliga-
tion to provide services including education, and providing more services could draw more people to the city, said the paper.
Another UNICEF report titled ‘Basic Education for Urban Working Children' that was updated in September, 2008 said, most working children cannot afford the time to attend regular schooling. Because these girls and boys do not have access to education, they become trapped in low-skilled, low income jobs, which further push them into the vicious cycle of intergenerational poverty.
Inter-city and internal migration is common among people living in urban slums, home to most of Bangladesh's urban working children. Landlords often have no legal right to the slum land where they build houses, so evictions are common. Civic unrest and employment instability also force families to migrate both within the city and across the country. These patterns make for high drop-out rates among those urban working children who manage to enroll in school, the report said.
Rasheda K Choudhury, Executive Director of CAMPE said, "There ate many floating children in urban areas. They move from one slum to another slum which causes a major hindrance in their receiving basic education, and increases dropout rate."
Although a section of slum children get enrolled in schools, the attendance rate is lower than the national average attendance rate.
The Net Attendance Rate (NAR) varies by 16 percent between the slums and national average, according to a UNICEF statistics.
Visiting slums and analysing data, it becomes clear that many children living in urban poverty are clearly disadvantaged and excluded from
around a dozen of kids of his age at Kamalapur railway station, said his family came to Dhaka around six months ago from Barguna rendered destitute by river-erosion.
"We have no accommodation for
staying at night in the city. How I will go to school," asked Alamgir.
t Shipon or Alamgir are not the only ones faced with such circumstances, but hundreds of slum children are deprived of education like them.
Talking to The Daily Star, Dr. Erum Mariam, Director of Institute of Educational Development of BRAC University, said “The number of
basic education.
Talking to this correspondent, an 8-year-old child Shipon, who lives in Rayerbazar slum, said he wants to go to school, but his family does not allow him.
"My mother sells daily meal to working people like rickshaw pullers, truck drivers, day labourers and others. I have to accompany my mother in her business. For example, I have to bring water, wash plates and glasses, clean the wastes after taking food. That is why, I can not go to school," said Shipon.
Shipon's mother Reshma Akhter said, "If my son does not help me in my business, I will have to appoint another boy with the cost of Tk 100 or Tk 150 daily. I cannot spend such extra money because I have to run my family with my income."
Another child Alamgir aged around 10, who was seen gossiping with
schools in slum area in Dhaka and Chittagong is not sufficient against the demand.”
More government schools and non-formal schools by NGOs should be set up in the slum areas to ensure access to basic education for all the slum children, she said.