According to the national survey on child labour of 2003, 14.3 per cent population has education level of class-IX to class- X, 7.6 per cent secondary school certificate (SSC) and equivalent, and 5.3 per cent higher secondary certificate (HSC) and above.

The data has also revealed that only 3.6 per cent people received technical training in various trades or fields.

In urban areas, 6.1 per cent received training as against 2.9 per cent in rural areas. The proportion of trained females is almost half of their male counterparts.

A question was put to the head of the household for providing information on each and every member of his household of age 5 years whether they can read and write a letter in the survey.

As per the answers revealed that 47.9 per cent population was illiterate as against 52.1 per cent literate during 2003. The literacy rate in urban areas was much higher than that of rural areas.

According to population census 2001, the overall literacy rate was 42.5 per cent for Bangladesh.

The national survey revealed that 98.2 per cent children received education in formal educational institutions as against 1.8 per cent from non-formal types of institutions like family, NGO and others.

The proportion of children, who received education from the NGO informal education programmes, was as high as 0.9 per cent.

As many as 1.3 per cent children received education through NGO programmes and the urban-rural variation was also significant.

Of the total of 33.3 million children of age group 5 to 17 currently attending school, only 8.3 million were engaged in economic and or non-economic activities.

The proportions of children engaged in economic and non- economic activities in the age group 5-9, 10- 14 and 15-17 were 8.9, 38.6 and 36.4 per cent respectively.

The proportion of school attending children who are engaged in economic activities is higher in rural areas than that of the urban areas due to the fact that the rural school children generally engage themselves in farm activities after or before the school hours to support their families.