Public education resources spent in Bangladesh for children in the richest households remains much higher than that of the poorest households, finds a study by the UNICEF.
"In Bangladesh percentage of public education resources going to children from the poorest households versus that spent on children from the richest households is 15 per cent and 27 per cent", the UN children's fund discloses in the study report.
However, the report also revealed that nearly 1 in 3 adolescent girls from the poorest households around the world has never been to school.
The report, "Addressing the learning crisis: An urgent need to better finance education for the poorest children", was published on Monday to coincide with a meeting of education ministers, at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland.
The agency urged world leaders to address 'shameful' disparities in public education spending.
Poverty, gender discrimination, disability, ethnic origin or language of instruction, physical distance from schools and poor infrastructure are among the obstacles that continue to obstruct the poorest children from having quality education.
Exclusion at every step of education perpetuates poverty and is a key driver of a global learning crisis.
The paper Addressing the learning crisis: An urgent need to better finance education for the poorest children highlights major disparities in the distribution of public education spending.
Limited and unequally distributed funding results in large class sizes, poorly trained teachers, lack of education materials and poor school infrastructure. This in turn has an adverse impact on attendance, enrolment and learning.
"Countries everywhere are failing the world's poorest children, and in doing so, failing themselves," said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore.
"As long as public education spending is disproportionately skewed towards children from the richest households, the poorest will have little hope of escaping poverty, learning the skills they need to compete and succeed in today's world, and contributing to their countries' economies."
Looking at 42 countries with available data, the paper finds that education for children from the richest 20 per cent of households are allocated nearly double the amount of education funding than children from the poorest 20 per cent of households.
Ten countries across Africa account for the highest disparities in education spending, with four times as much funding allocated to the richest children compared with the poorest.
In Guinea and the Central African Republic - countries with some of the world's highest rates of out-of-school children - the richest children benefit from nine and six times, respectively, the amount of public education funds than the poorest children.
Barbados, Denmark, Ireland, Norway and Sweden are the only countries included in the analysis that distribute education funding equally between the richest and poorest quintiles.
The paper notes that the lack of resources available for the poorest children is exacerbating a crippling learning crisis, as schools fail to provide quality education for their students.
According to the World Bank, more than half of children living in low- and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple story by the end of primary school.
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