Third-party Program Evaluation by the Salam Institute for Peace and Justice

This summary shows the effectiveness of ICRD's efforts to facilitate reform of the madrasas of Pakistan

Visit to Pakistani Women's Madrasas: April 2007

I visited five women's madrasas, in addition to meeting separately with other male madrasa leaders and briefly sitting in on Hafiz Khalil and Shabbir Ahmed's own 10-day workshop. The report documents the experiences of the author touring women's madrasas in Pakistan

Confronting poverty and educational inequalities: Madrasas as a strategy for contesting dominant literacy in rural Bangladesh

In a context of globalisation and the rapid expansion of low-paid ‘global’ jobs, formal schooling is no longer perceived as contributing to the acquisition of skills that are appropriate or even relevant to active engagement with the new opportunities. Based on empirical material from a village in Bangladesh, this paper explores the role of madrasa education in challenging the dominant paradigm of learning embedded in formal secular schooling. Despite charges of low quality and traditionalism, local narratives reveal how madrasa learning is used to negotiate and transform inequalities, both in material and social terms. Madrasa education is cheaper, and addresses issues of poverty, but the narratives also emphasise learning the Arabic language, seen to facilitate male overseas migration to the Gulf countries, a channel for upward social and economic mobility. In a context of global competition that supports individualism, a focus on character and morality as represented through an Islamic identity, alongside communitarian values, is seen as important for maintaining a degree of social cohesion and is hence socially valued. Reading and reciting the Quran are also viewed as essential traits for a woman, enabling her to appropriately socialise her children in the absence of her migrant husband. One finds here a simultaneous process of contestation and resistance, seeking successful occupational trajectories and social recognition for men, while at the same time contributing to the reproduction of gendered inequalities

Religious Schools, Social Values and Economic Attitudes: Evidence from Bangladesh

This paper examines the social impact of a madrasa (Islamic religious school) reform program in Bangladesh. The key features of the reform are change of the curriculum and introduction of female teachers. We assess whether the reform is making any contribution in improving social cohesion in rural areas. We use new data on teachers and female graduates from rural Bangladesh and explore how attitudes toward desired fertility, working mothers, higher education for girls vis-à-vis boys, and various political regimes vary across secondary schools and modernised madrasas. We find some evidence of attitudinal gaps by school type. Modernised religious education is associated with attitudes that are conducive to democracy. On the other hand, when compared to their secular schooled peers, madrasa graduates have perverse attitude on matters such as working mothers, desired fertility and higher education for girls. We also find that young people's attitudes are interlinked with that of their teachers. Exposure to female and younger teachers leads to more favourable attitudes among graduates. These estimated effects are robust to conditioning on a rich set of individual, family and school traits. We conclude by discussing other social and economic implications of these findings.

Implementing curriculum of madrasah Tsanawiyah in increasing the quality of pesantren Al-Kautsar Al-Akbar Medan

Implementasi Kurikulum Pesantren Madrasah Tsanawiyah dalam peningkatan mutu di Pesantren Al-Kautsar Al-Akbar Medan bertujuan untuk mengetahui struktur kurikulum pesantren dan pelaksaannya di madrasah tersebut. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif dengan metode deskriptif, yaitu menggali data yang terkait dengan pelaksanaan kurikulum pesantren dalam proses pembelajaran di Madrasah Tsanawiyah dan mendeskripsikan data yang ada sesuai dengan fokus penelitian untuk memperjelas tujuan diadakannya penelitian tersebut. Adapun permasalahan yang dibahas dalam tulisan ini adalah bagaimana kurikulum pesantren dan pelaksanaannya di Madrasah Tsanawiyah Pesantren Al-Kautsar Al-Akbar Medan. Hasil yang didapatkan bahwa secara struktural Madrasah Tsanawiyah Al-Kautsar Al-Akbar Medan menerapkan dua kurikulum yaitu kurikulum pendidikan pesantren dan kurikulum kementerian agama. Kurikulum pendidikan pesantren dibagi menjadi dua kurikulum. Yang petama adalah yang tidak berkaitan dengan tata bahasa Arab seperti Al-Qur’an, Hadis, dan Akhlak, ini disebut dengan kurikulum pesantren. Sedangkan mata pelajaran seperti nahwu dan sharaf dimasukkan dalam kurikulum bahasa Arab. Dalam pelaksaan kurikulum pendidikan pesantren tidak jauh berbeda dengan kurikulum Kementerian agama. Yang mengajar kurikulum pendidikan pesantren adalah guru yang berkompeten yang mempunyai kualifikasi khusus di bidang agama dan semua gurunya adalah alumni pesantren. Metode yang digunakan dalam pembelajaran materi pendidikan pesantren adalah menggunakan metode bandongan dan sorogan yang dilaksanakan secara klasikal. Metode evaluasi yang digunakan adalah evaluasi dengan ujian tulis dan praktik

Student Achievement Conditioned Upon School Selection: Religious and Secular Secondary School Quality in Bangladesh

In this paper we present new evidence on the impact of school characteristics on secondary student achievement using a rich data set from rural Bangladesh. We deal with a potentially important selectivity issue in the South Asian context: the non-random sorting of children into madrasas (Islamic faith schools). We do so by employing a combination of fixed effects and instrumental variable estimation techniques. Our empirical results do not reveal any difference in test scores between religious and secular schools when selection into secondary school is taken into account. However, we document significant learning deficit by gender and primary school type: girls and graduates of primary madrasas have significantly lower test scores even after controlling for school and classroom-specific unobservable correlates of learning.

Madrasas and NGOs : complements or substitutes ? non-state providers and growth in female education in Bangladesh

There has been a proliferation of non-state providers of education services in the developing world. In Bangladesh, for instance, Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee runs more than 40,000 non-formal schools that cater to school-drop outs from poor families or operate in villages where there's little provision for formal schools. This paper presents a rationale for supporting these schools on the basis of their spillover effects on female enrollment in secondary (registered) madrasa schools (Islamic faith schools). Most madrasa high schools in Bangladesh are financed by the sate and include amodern curriculum alongside traditional religious subjects. Using an establishment-level dataset on student enrollment in secondary schools and madrasas, the authors demonstrate that the presence of madrasas is positively associated with secondary female enrollment growth. Such feminization of madrasas is therefore unique and merits careful analysis. The authors test the effects of the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee primary schools on growth in female enrollment in madrasas. The analysis deals with potential endoegeneity by using data on number of the number of school branches and female members in the sub-district. The findings show that madrasas that are located in regions with a greater number of Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee schools have higher growth in female enrollment. This relationship is further strengthened by the finding that there is, however, no effect of these schools on female enrollment growth in secular schools.Primary Education,Tertiary Education,Education For All,Gender and Education,Teaching and Learning

The National Muslim Forum Nepal: Experiences of Conflict, Formations of Identity

With Nepal\u27s recent transition to state secularism, the politicization of Muslim religious identity has emerged with increasing vitality. One particular pan-Nepali Muslim organization, the Rastriya Muslim Mane Nepal (National Muslim Forum Nepal), offers a window into the complex relationship between national and religious identity that animates this politicization. Through analysis of the National Muslim Forum\u27s earliest discourses, produced between 2005 and 2006, both immediately before and after the people\u27s revolution that resulted in the declaration of Nepal as a secular state, this essay highlights the ways that experiences of conflict coupled with a national political transition shape and contribute to this politicization. It also offers a picture of some of the ways in which conceptions of the nation and religious community come together to help define the forum\u27s call for a new Muslim religio-political identity across a diverse Nepali national population. [excerpt