Britain and Bangladesh share a commitment, along with all the other nations in the world, to achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. These goals seek to eliminate poverty by meeting specific global targets by 2015, for example, achieving universal primary education and reducing maternal mortality by 75 per cent.

Bangladesh has made real progress in many of these areas: the proportion of people living in poverty is reducing, people are living longer, healthier lives and more children than ever are going to school. This is great news, but as the Government of Bangladesh's own strategy makes clear, there is still long way to go if the country is to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the education sector in Bangladesh. Significant progress has been made: More children than ever are going to school and as many girls are going to school as boys. These are firm steps in the right direction. Yet they must be supported through the provision of good quality education that prevents children from dropping out and equips them with the essential skills they need to contribute to the growth of the economy.

Thirty three per cent of children drop out of school. There are 6.5 million working children aged between 5 and 14 who have not received an education at all and a further 2 million who are in non-formal primary education.

Unwieldy class sizes, inadequate contact hours, lack of teaching materials, poor teacher motivation and training have all played their part to hamper children's access to quality education.

The Government of Bangladesh is working to improve the situation and has launched the six-year, US $1.6 bn Primary Education Development Programme II. This programme will improve the quality of primary education for 17 million children a year. It will develop the teaching profession, improve training and access to teaching materials and increase the number of classrooms available.

The government is funding 67 per cent of the programme with donors providing the rest. During my visit I will be announcing our contribution which will make the UK the highest single bilateral donor to the programme.

In addition to our funding of the government's primary education programme we will continue to support NGO's who are providing over 2 million children in rural areas with non-formal education.

We also wish to continue to work with the Government to develop a long-term national strategy to ensure that these hard to reach children will be able to access to formal government education in the future.

We are committed to reducing poverty in many other sectors in Bangladesh. Our development assistance programme here is our second largest in Asia with 800 crore taka being spent annually.

Even though we are one of Bangladesh's largest donors, we can achieve little on our own. We work closely with both the Government of Bangladesh and civil society to help deliver essential health facilities and better primary education. We have assisted the micro-credit programme which has helped many millions of poor people organise themselves effectively and take action to realise their rights.

But there are still about 38 million people in Bangladesh who are living on less than a dollar a day -- a disproportionately high number of these are women and girls. In Bangladesh, gender inequality is a key cross-sector constraint to eliminating poverty and achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Female mortality is one third higher than that of males: twice as many girls as boys die between their first and fifth birthdays. Girls are more likely to grow up underweight than boys; and households headed by women are among the poorest in the country.

The status of women in any society directly influences the health and education of their children.

With this in mind the Government of Bangladesh has highlighted the importance of tackling gender inequality in its National Strategy for Economic Growth, Poverty Reduction and Social Development.

My department will assist the Government in achieving this through our new country assistance plan for Bangladesh "Women and Girls first." This plan will give the highest priority to women's advancement and add a strong gender focus to all DFID programme activities. In addition the plan includes targeted interventions to improve women and girls' access to food and safe water and reduce maternal mortality.

The Millennium Development Goals prioritise universal primary education and the health and basic rights of women and girls for good reason: These targets are key to enabling countries to lift themselves out of poverty. By giving mothers the basic facilities they need to live healthier lives and to raise healthy, educated children, we provide the foundations for a strong and growing economy. We share this vision with the Government of Bangladesh and I look forward to increasing the UK's commitment to help realise it.