There are very few studies comparing the performance of NGO schools and other educational providers<sup>1</sup> . A notable exception is Sukontamarn (2005) who uses data on BRAC schools from Bangladesh and examine the impact of the entry of NGOs in primary education on female enrollment<sup>2</sup> . Sukontamarn finds that the entry of BRAC schools significantly increases girls' enrollment as compared to boys. Cohorts which are exposed to BRAC schools have higher probability of enrollment and the effect operates mainly through female students. However, besides this, we are not aware of any other study on the relative performance of NGO schools in Bangladesh. Most importantly, there is no study which has examined the potential spillover effects of NGO schools on other outcomes such as female participation in secondary schools. Bangladesh has recently achieved the remarkable fit of gender parity in secondary enrollment. Therefore, understanding the determinants of growth in female enrollment is extremely important for other countries who are trying to fulfill the MDG target of closing gender gap in secondary education.

Bangladesh provides a unique setting to study the impact of primary, NGO-run schools on female enrollment in secondary schools for another reason. There are a large number of Islamic faith schools or madrasas for whom, like NGO schools, altruistic motivations are the principal determinants of location decisions. On one hand, both serve children from socially underprivileged families. On the other hand, they have conflicting ideologies and are known to target different gender groups. In other words, madrasas oppose NGO activities and have historically educated boys. For instance, registered madrasas in Bangladesh during the 1980s were predominantly boys-only with only 7% of the total enrolled students being female. However, this has changed in over just one decade. By the year 2000, 46% of the students in registered secondary madrasas in the country were girls.

Such dramatic feminization of registered secondary madrasas has been attributed to introduction of a conditional cash transfer scheme which target female students in secondary schools and madrasas. Female enrollment has increased more than five-fold since 1994 when the conditional cash transfer scheme was introduced. However, the last two decades has also seen a rise in NGO schools at the primary level and given the current controversy over madrasa reform, knowledge of any externalities arising from NGO schools is extremely important from policy point of view. In this study, by way of documenting the process of feminization of madrasas, we examine the impact of BRAC schools in the context of the recent rise in female enrollment in government recognized secondary madrasas.

> 1 In general, evaluation of the performance of national NGOs is rare. As pointed out by Barr and Fafchamps (2005), there have been very few quantitative evaluations of entire countries’ NGO sectors so that little is known about the motivations and performance of NGOs in general. Existing published research on Bangladeshi NGOs (e.g. Gauri and Galef, 2005; Fruttero and Gauri, 2005) is largely descriptive; they do not test relative performance of NGOs with other service providers.

> 2 Additional evidence on quality of BRAC schools is also provided by Asadullah, Chaudhury and Dar (2007). Studies on the relative performance NGO schools for other countries include Arif and Saqib (2003) and Khan and Kiefer (2007). Both studies utilize sample survey data from Pakistan.

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