Poor learning outcomes, underfunding, politicisation: Bangladesh’s education system fails its children
Dhaka, Sep 19 (IANS) Bangladesh has largely failed to make education a vehicle for building capability and character, with the country’s educational crisis reflecting that fundamental failure, a report has stated.
It noted that the crisis is often presented as a series of disconnected problems — exam cheating, poor learning outcomes, a curriculum focused on memorisation rather than critical thinking, weak technical training, politicised universities and chronic underfunding.
Yet these are not isolated failures, but recurring manifestations of the same underlying weakness in the education system, according to an editorial in Bangladesh’s ‘Daily Star’ newspaper.
Citing the World Bank’s 2024 estimate, it said that 51 per cent of Bangladeshi children are unable to read and understand an age-appropriate text by the end of primary school — a particularly alarming figure given that almost all children in the country are enrolled in school.
“This is no longer a country failing to reach its children; it is a country reaching them and failing to teach most of them adequately. Access was the first problem, and Bangladesh made progress on it; learning is the harder one,” the report noted.
It further noted that public spending on education in Bangladesh has remained at around two per cent of GDP or less for years, falling far short of the 4–6 per cent benchmark set by UNESCO’s Education 2030 framework
“Money alone will not repair bad governance, weak teaching or a defective curriculum — pouring more into badly governed institutions can simply produce more expensive failure. But the converse is equally true: no country acquires excellent teachers, modern laboratories and competitive universities on bargain-basement financing. Bangladesh has to spend more and spend better—both, not either,” the report mentioned.
All these failures, it argued, lead to the same economic reckoning: Bangladesh is failing to build human capability fast enough to match its economic ambitions.
“A badly educated child in 2026 will be in the prime of their working life in 2050. Today’s struggling primary-school student, tomorrow’s underqualified technician; today’s rote-taught vocational student, tomorrow’s productivity ceiling; today’s politicised university, tomorrow’s hollow research base; today’s poorly taught undergraduate, tomorrow’s poorly prepared teacher; and today’s underfunded classroom, tomorrow’s skills shortage,” the report detailed.
“And skills shortages, unlike factories, cannot be repaired quickly. Factories can go up in a few years; investment regulations can be rewritten in months. Human capability takes a generation, and Bangladesh does not have a spare one,” it added.
–IANS
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