The Asian Development Bank is to lend $68.9 million to Bangladesh to help reform the country's education system which is plagued by high dropout rates and lack of teacher training, an ADB statement said late on Wednesday. The ADB's 32-year loan will cover 63 percent of a $108.7 million Bangladesh plan to raise education levels.
The Canadian International Development Agency will provide $18 million for the project and the Bangladesh government the rest.
Bangladesh will have an 8-year grace period on interest payments, which otherwise will be set at 1.5 percent.
"An acute shortage of trained secondary school teachers is hampering the provision of quality secondary education in Bangladesh," the statement said.
"Fewer than half of teachers have had any teacher training, and much of the rest are poorly trained."
The ADB said 44 percent of secondary school children drop out of school and 38 percent drop out from higher secondary education.
Pass rates for the secondary school certificate examinations declined to 36 percent in 2003 from 55 percent in 1999, the statement said.
"The high failure rates together with high dropout rates represents a huge wastage of resources - financial and human," the ADB's senior education specialist, Jouko Sarvi, was quoted as saying.
About 100,000 untrained teachers will be trained, while 50,000 new teachers will be trained under the project. All 17,000 head teachers will also benefit from training, ADB said.