Primary Education Stipend Programme, PESP
Basic Information
Country
Geographic area
Institutions and agencies involved
Population group
Children
Programme Details
Programme objectives
The PESP intervention sought to increase (i) enrolment rate, (ii) attendance rate, (iii) cycle completion rate, and hence (iv) to reduce dropout rate among primary school-age children from poor and vulnerable households.
Programme components
Considering, that the direct beneficiaries of the Primary Education Stipend Programme (PESP) are too young to manage the benefits themselves, it stands out as being the sole Bangladeshi initiative that considers the household and not the individual as its unit of analysis. Therefore, even though it awards individual benefits per child in primary education, the head of the family is the person meant to seek this benefit on behalf of his or her children, and the programme’s grant is paid to the parents.
Previous programme name (if any)
Food for Education (FFE) and the Primary Education Stipends (PES)
Conditionalities (if any)
FFE (1993-2001): Households not receiving other social safety nets; Child attendance rate of 85% //
PESP1 (2002-2008): Households not receiving other social safety nets; Child attendance rate of 85% ; 50% marks on annual examination //
PESP2 (2009-2015): Child attendance rate of 85%; 50% marks on annual examination //
PESP3 (2015/16-2021): 85% attendance rate; Pass annual examinations.
Coverage
14,000,000 students should be cover under the 2022-23 budget.
Programme expenditure
BDT 1900 crore (1 crore = 10 million) budgeted in both 2021-22 and 2022-23 budgets.
Targeting and eligiblity
Targeting methods
Targeted areas
Nationalwide
Target groups
In 2016, the programme was reformed to reach all children attending government schools in Bangladesh.
Eligibility criteria
FFE: Poorest 2 or 3 unions in all 460 rural upazilas (approximately one-third of rural unions) //
PESP1 and PESP2: all rural unions //
PESP3: Rural and urban areas
Coverage and other information
Amount of benefits
Payment/delivery frequency
Benefit delivery mechanism
Payments are disbursed via mobile banking through the Rupali Bank
Benefit recipients
Monitoring and evaluation mechanisms and frequency
All eligible institutions are instructed to prepare beneficiary lists by the Upazila Education Office. Student and parent details are recorded upon enrolment and in a ‘Know Your Customer’ form for banking services. Teachers prepare lists of eligible students and the amounts for which they are eligible to the head teacher, who is responsible for verifying information, printing lists and submitting these to the Upazila Education Office. The Upazila Education Office verifies the lists and sends them to the project head office for approval, from where they are uploaded onto Rupali Bank’s server.
MIS
Once the AUEOs upload student information onto the Rupali Bank server, the Mobile Division of the bank prepares the data and send the database to SureCash. SureCash then conducts an internal validation of the student records (identifying wrong or missing values), which are then returned to the relevant Upazila Education Office, which verifies the data with teachers. The updated phone numbers are then used by SureCash for disbursement.
