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

Social interactions and student achievement in a developing country : An instrumental variables approach

This paper identifies endogenous social effects in mathematics test performance for eighth graders in rural Bangladesh using information on arsenic contamination of water wells at home as an instrument. In other words, the identification relies on variation in test scores among peers owing to exogenous exposure to arsenic contaminated water wells at home. The results suggest that the peer effect is significant, and school selection plays little role in biasing peer effects estimates.Tertiary Education,Education For All,Teaching and Learning,Primary Education,Secondary Education

Poisoning the mind : arsenic contamination and cognitive achievement of children

Bangladesh has experienced the largest mass poisoning of a population in history owing to contamination of groundwater with naturally occurring inorganic arsenic. Continuous drinking of such metal-contaminated water is highly cancerous; prolonged drinking of such water risks developing diseases in a span of just 5-10 years. Arsenicosis-intake of arsenic-contaminated drinking water-has implications for children's cognitive and psychological development. This study examines the effect of arsenicosis at school and at home on cognitive achievement of children in rural Bangladesh using recent nationally representative school survey data on students. Information on arsenic poisoning of the primary source of drinking water-tube wells-is used to ascertain arsenic exposure. The findings show an unambiguously negative and statistically significant correlation between mathematics score and arsenicosis at home, net of exposure at school. Split-sample analysis reveals that the effect is only specific to boys; for girls, the effect is negative but insignificant. Similar correlations are found for cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes such as subjective well-being, that is, a self-reported measure of life satisfaction (also a direct proxy for health status) of students and their performance in primary-standard mathematics. These correlations remain robust to controlling for school-level exposure.Education For All,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Tertiary Education,Urban Solid Waste Management

Schools, Household, Risk, and Gender: Determinants of Child Schooling in Ethiopia

Drawing upon data from Ethiopia, we highlight the relationship between investments in child schooling and key factors related to household characteristics, supply and quality of schooling, and income shocks. The unique contribution of this study stems from our examination of the effect of adverse income shocks on gender-differentiated child schooling outcomes. While there are several empirical studies that test the degree to which households are able to smooth consumption in response to a covariate shock, only few studies probe the gender-differentiated impacts of those shocks within the household. We find a strong bias against investments in female education in rural Ethiopia. Controlling for key supply and demand side factors such as household income, parental education, distance to and quality of schools, girls who reside in rural areas are almost 12 percent less likely to be enrolled in primary school compared to boys. Furthermore, while an adverse weather-induced crop shock has no discernable impact on the schooling of boys, the same adverse shock has a deleterious impact on both the probability of enrollment and completion of schooling for girls. Besides the impact of adverse income shocks on child schooling, we find that investment in child schooling is significantly influenced by positive education externalities with the household and community, availability and distance to schools, and quality of school infrastructure.Key words: Income shocks; Schooling; Ethiopia.

Returns to Education in Bangladesh

This paper reports labour market returns to education in Bangladesh using national level household survey data. Returns are estimated separately for rural and urban samples, males, females and private sector employees. Substantial heterogeneity in returns is observed; e.g. estimates are higher for urban (than rural sample) and female samples (compared to their male counterparts). Our ordinary least square estimates of returns to education are robust to control for types of schools attended by individuals and selection into wage work.

Impact of intellectual capital on profitability : conventional versus Islamic banks

Intellectual capital has been found to have a significant association with profitability in the financial sector of various parts of the world. As a result, this study aims to empirically investigate the relationship between intellectual capital and financial performance of twentyseven private commercial banks for the year 2013 in Bangladesh. Annual reports for the relevant year of the selected banks have been used to gather secondary information for the empirical models based on Pulic’s VAIC model. Stepwise regression was performed for the full sample, conventional and Islamic banks separately. The analysis indicates that both VIAC and its components have a significant association with profitability. Results for conventional and Islamic banks established different components of VIAC as a significant predictor of bank’s profitability. A future study including all financial institutions could provide a better estimate of the impact of intellectual capital on profitability for the finance sector.peer-reviewe

Credit Risk Grading Model and Loan Performance of Commercial Banks in Bangladesh

In modern banking concept one of the most important functions of a bank or financial Institution is “Management of Credit Risks”. Risk is inherent in all aspects of commercial operations. However for Banks, credit risk is an essential factor that needs to be managed. Due to increase in the number of non-performing loans and competition in the banking market, most of the commercial banks are strongly focus on credit risk assessment. Credit risk arises due to the possibility that the borrower may fail to repay the loan. Following the recent global financial crisis, which originated from poor management of credit risk, it is the most discussed topic in the banking industry of Bangladesh. In order to establish the creditworthiness, credit analysts typically use a combination of financial or accounting data and non-financial variables as well as a number of different models, or analytical tools. Some of the methods involve a subjective approach; others are more systematic in that they use quantitative techniques to evaluate a credit against objective benchmarks. This study develops a credit risk grading model which will contribute significantly in the risk assessment. Keywords: Credit risk, Credit risk management, Loan performance, Risk assessment, Risk grading model

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.

Study of malignant tumours of the uterine corpus: histopathology and immunohistochemistry

Background: The uterine corpus represents the second most common site for malignancy in the female genital tract. This study was performed to ascertain the profile of malignant tumours of the uterine corpus reported at our centre.Methods: A retrospective analysis of cases retrieved from the archives of the department of pathology from January 2014 to December 2016. Clinical information of the patients was collected from the hospital records.  Classification and grading of the tumours were done according to the current WHO classification.Results: Nineteen cases were studied. There were ten cases of endometrial adenocarcinoma, five cases of leiomyosarcoma, three cases of endometrial stromal sarcoma and one case of carcinosarcoma(malignant mixed mullerian tumour). The age range of endometrial adenocarcinoma was 55 to 85 years and presented with post menopausal bleeding, whereas endometrial stromal sarcomas occurred in women above 45 years of age. Leiomyosarcomas had age range from 26 to 65 years. All leiomyosarcomas were clinically diagnosed as fibroid. Majority of endometrial adenocarcinomas were well differentiated endometroid type. Out of the three endometrial stromal sarcomas two were high grade, one with metastasis. All leiomyosarcomas showed mitotic rate above 10/10hpf.Conclusions: Endometrial carcinomas form the majority of malignant tumours of uterine corpus and occur in older age group followed by leiomyosarcomas. Endometrial stromal sarcomas are less common and occur in middle aged and older patients. Leiomyosarcomas and stromal sarcomas are usually misdiagnosed as fibroids clinically unless metastases are present