After decades of failure, can we finally fix our education system?

Arguably, the most consequential failure of political leadership in independent Bangladesh has been in the field of education. The result is today’s disarray across all sub-sectors of education, which holds the future of our nation hostage. The burning question is whether a newly elected government will recognise the seriousness of the situation and embark on a path of educational renewal.

Education has been a priority only rhetorically for elected and non-elected governments of Bangladesh since its birth. The major contenders in the upcoming parliamentary election—the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami—have included education in their election promises—a sundry list of targets yet to add up to a vision of a much-needed educational transformation. More critically, given the history of promises and plans unfulfilled, questions loom as to whether and how the targets will be realised. 

At present, we do not have an education sector plan. What we have are partial sub-sector projects. An example is the Primary Education Development Program (PEDP), the fourth phase of which is ongoing. Though described as a sector-wide approach, it covers only government primary schools, leaving behind various non-state institutions and madrasas, which together serve, mostly very poorly, about 40 percent of the primary school-age children.

Of the primary school children, around 80 percent reportedly complete the level. However, an assessment has shown that more than half of them do not acquire a functional level of literacy and numeracy even after completing five years of primary education. Nevertheless, there has been a compulsory primary education law since 1990, and the government also pledged to provide primary education to all for free. 

On the other hand, the state has no plan for universal secondary education. At present, about two-thirds of appropriate-age children enrol in secondary schools of all types up to grade ten and roughly half of them complete the level. The numbers of enrolment and completion say nothing about students’ actual learning, which is widely recognised as seriously deficient. 

A rapid expansion of madrasa education—both Alia madrasa, supported by the government, and the Qawmi madrasa, which is outside the purview of state supervision—has happened since the 1980s. Driven by poor performance and higher costs, many children moved to both of these types of madrasas from mainstream schools during the Covid and post-Covid periods. However, the quality of teaching, learning environment and, critically, the relevance of what is taught in madrasas to prepare young people for life and work remain questionable. 

There has been growth in the number of institutions and students in vocational and technical education, general higher education and professional education. In each of these subsectors, the major criterion for justifying the investment and judging the outcome is the employability of the graduates. However, there is no systematic approach to assessing these sub-sectors by this criterion, such as periodic tracer studies of graduate employment in respective fields. 

Available evidence indicates that the majority of vocational-technical graduates are not employed in their respective areas of training at an adequate salary, presumably because of the poor quality and low market-relevance of the training. The National University, the affiliating body for about 2,500 colleges enrolling three-quarters of general higher education students, produces graduates who face an uncertain future in the job market. At least a third of them wait for years before being hired, and many end up in jobs not requiring a tertiary education qualification. About 30 percent of youth aged 18-25 are not in education, employment or training (NEET). They are in a socio-economic limbo and vulnerable to emotional distress, criminality and extremist behaviour. 

The Education Policy 2010 (NEP-2010) adopted during Sheikh Hasina’s regime is still in effect. It is replete with compromises and contradictions. For instance, the 2010 policy departed from the 1974 recommendation of Bangla as the medium at all levels of education. The policy accorded legitimacy to educational developments that emerged during the military and military-backed regimes from 1975 to 1990—such as the rapid growth of the two types of madrasas as a parallel education system and acceptance of the multiple streams of schooling with different objectives, learning content and learning experience. 

The 2010 policy mentioned some key reform issues, such as the critical role of teachers in the education system and the need to enhance skills, capabilities, incentives and status of teachers. It noted the perils of over-centralised education management. It recommended larger public investment to fulfil the state’s obligation for children’s education. The policy, however, did not indicate specific strategies that would redirect a trajectory of reform and acquiesced to the continuation of the existing pattern. In any case, there was no systematic effort and a mechanism was never set to follow up.

The legacy of rhetoric without action towards real change has continued during the tenure of the interim government. A firefighting mode dealing with myriad demands and complaints of many stakeholders in the various sub-sectors of education has kept the two ministries dealing with the education sector preoccupied. Will there be a change now in the way education is prioritised, how educational decisions are made, and how these are followed through when a new government takes over? 

The long-accumulated morass in education calls for bold steps, away from the trodden path. The policy discourse among education academics and activists suggests a few early actions capable of paving the way for transformative change required at least in school education, the foundation of the education system: (i) Bring all school education from pre-primary to pre-university under one ministry to facilitate a holistic approach to building an equitable and inclusive foundation of basic education of acceptable quality for all children. (ii) Prepare a time-bound plan to ensure that a primary and a secondary school of acceptable quality are within easy reach and affordable for every child. (iii) Examine education resources and financing to ensure that no child is deprived of schooling of acceptable quality because of poverty, at least up to the secondary level. (iv) Begin a pilot project to establish district education authorities for school education, leading to decentralised and responsive governance and management. (v) Rethink the management of teachers and the education workforce, including their professional preparation, remuneration, status and career path to attract “the best and the brightest” to the education profession. 

A school education reform plan, as well as other education sub-sector reform plans, can be components of the overall education decade plan. Should we not have a decade-long plan guided and overseen by an education reform council comprising education experts respected for their integrity and judgment? The education reform council can be turned into a statutory and permanent education commission as envisaged by the NEP-2010. A new post-election government must be ready to respond to citizens’ expectations regarding a new beginning for the country. A plan for the education sector must be more than rhetorical.

Dr Manzoor Ahmed is professor emeritus at BRAC University, chair of Bangladesh ECD Network (BEN), and adviser to the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE).

Views expressed in this article are the author's own. 

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