The informal education program represents a substantial improvement over the status quo ante, in which learning-center instructors lacked lesson plans and students lacked textbooks. Once completed, the informal program will have five levels, intended to be equivalent to nine years of school. The hours of instruction in levels three and four will increase, from 2 hours to around 3.5 hours per day. Some instructors told Human Rights Watch they had received only a few days of training; humanitarian groups in the education sector also intend to improve the quality of education through increased teacher training. But the informal education program does not meet Bangladesh’s obligations to fulfill the right to education for all children, without discrimination, under the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The government has never indicated it will certify Rohingya children’s education, permit them to take national examinations, or transfer to formal education. By contrast, Bangladesh plans to establish “learning centers that would follow the national primary education curriculum” as part ofa strategy to help one million out-of-school Bangladeshi children integrate into the formal education system, supported by a nointerest, $700 million loan from the World Bank. Challenges in Ensuring Education If and when lesson plans and textbooks become available for the upper levels of the informal education program, it will still not reach the equivalent of a secondary school education, which goes to class 10 in Bangladesh, while higher secondary school goes until class 12. The hours of instruction will increase, but will still be around 50 percent fewer than at single-shift Bangladeshi schools. Lessons in the Bengali language are still banned. Humanitarian actors working to deliver education to refugees also emphasized that the informal education program was not a long-term solution. One described the lesson plans as “scrambled-together,” and noted, “they’re not being ‘piloted,’ they’re supposed to fade away.” Another NGO official said, “it’s not super-basic, but it’s basic. It’s an interim measure.” An education in the Myanmar curriculum might not best meet the needs of Rohingya children if they are forced to remain in long-term exile in Bangladesh. Several Rohingya children, parents and teachers (as well as Bangladeshi teachers) argued that it was important for Rohingya to be allowed to learn Bangla. Nonetheless, all 99 Rohingya 9 HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH | DECEMBER 2019