NSU Research Contributions

Title : Inequality in children’s educational well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh

Authors : Haridhan Goswami, M. Ibrahim Khalil, Gour Gobinda Goswami, and Bijoy Krishna Banik

Abstract : The aspiration to secure quality education is explicit in number 4 of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (United Nations, 2015). However, some countries have faced enormous challenges in meeting educational tar- gets due to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19). The crisis has shaken the world in different ways in different places. It is argued that inequalities have risen within and between countries (Balfour et al. 2022). Understanding the inequal- ity dynamics of gender, rural–urban locations, and digital poverty in children’s education during the pandemic is crucial for closing gaps in quality education during the post-pandemic recovery. It is argued that what happens in school and with learning is critical to understanding broader aspects of children’s lives, including their physical and mental health and future aspirations (Bradshaw et al. 2007; Huebner et al. 2004; Rees & Main 2015). However, there appears to be a gap in knowledge regarding children’s assessment of educational wellbe- ing during the pandemic and how the key inequality factors, such as gender, rural–urban location, and digital poverty, affected their educational wellbeing During the pandemic, especially in developing countries. This chapter fills this research gap by focusing on Bangladesh, which has around 64 million children and young people.

Journal :	Volume :	Year : 2026	Issue :
Pages : 161-180	City : Cheltenham, UK · Northampton, MA, USA	Edition : 1	Editors : Jenny Chesters Associate Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne, Australia
Publisher : Edward Elger Publishing	ISBN : ISBN 978 1 0353 6371 1 (cased) ISBN 978 1 0353 6372 8 (eBook) ISBN 978 1 0353 9728 0 (ePub)	Book : Neoliberalism, Inequality and Education	Chapter : 9
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