Bangladesh’s education system is facing an unprecedented reckoning. The latest Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) results reveal the lowest pass rate in two decades, with nearly 43 percent of students failing and the number achieving the top GPA-5 sharply reduced.
Far from being a one-off anomaly, these results expose systemic weaknesses that have long plagued the country’s schooling.
While the Yunus-led interim government has formed 11 commissions to reform nearly every sector — from banking to governance — it has pointedly excluded education. The omission is not a bureaucratic oversight but a stark signal of political indifference to a sector meant to shape the nation’s future. And it is not only the present government. Successive administrations — political or military — have failed to prioritise education since Independence 54 years ago.
Learning crisis from the ground up
The collapse begins at the foundation. Primary education, meant to secure basic literacy and numeracy, remains inconsistent and poorly monitored. Although primary enrolment stands at 98 percent, about 35 percent of students drop out before completing secondary school. Inadequate teaching, poor classroom infrastructure, and an overemphasis on memorisation have left generations ill-prepared for higher learning.
Teacher quality and training remain among the weakest links. Many educators, particularly in rural schools, lack professional development and pedagogical training. Overcrowded classrooms — often with a single teacher managing more than 50 students — make individual attention impossible. English, mathematics, and ICT continue to record the highest failure rates, exposing the uneven quality of instruction nationwide.
The system’s obsession with pass rates and GPA tallies has long masked the true extent of the learning crisis. Schools and boards have celebrated inflated success figures while actual competency in reading, writing, and reasoning has remained alarmingly low. As Education Adviser C R Abrar admitted on Thursday, “We have unknowingly masked the true learning deficit.”
Neglect and decay across decades
The sorry state of education today is not the product of one administration but of decades of neglect. The National Education Policy of 2010 — which aimed to reduce rote learning and encourage digital and scientific literacy — remains largely unimplemented due to underfunding and bureaucratic inertia.
Only 18 percent of secondary schools nationwide have functional science laboratories, and fewer than 15 percent of teachers have received training in digital instruction. At the same time, curriculum reform has stalled for years, leaving students trapped in an outdated model that rewards memorisation over creativity or problem-solving.
The digital divide has deepened inequity. During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly half of all school-aged children lacked internet access, and most rural families could not afford smartphones or data packages for online learning. These gaps have directly contributed to this year’s HSC results and are likely to continue shaping future outcomes.
Government programmes to digitise classrooms have fallen far short of promises. Many schools never received the devices allocated to them, and those that did reported widespread equipment failures. In today’s world, it is simply impossible to impart quality education without digitisation.
A culture of corruption and patronage
Corruption continues to bleed the sector dry. Many parents are forced to pay bribes to get their children admitted to schools, while teaching positions are often filled through bribes and political influence rather than merit. Annual textbook distribution is plagued by delays and leakages, with thousands of books disappearing each year.
Infrastructure tells its own story: more than a quarter of primary schools lack electricity, and a third have no access to clean water. These conditions persist even as successive governments pledge “education for all.”
Meanwhile, the politicisation of higher education has eroded academic integrity. Political appointments dominate university governance, and merit-based recruitment has been replaced by partisan loyalty. This culture of patronage has stifled innovation, discouraged capable educators, and entrenched mediocrity.
The cost of neglect
Bangladesh’s learning crisis is not merely an academic issue — it is an economic and moral one. Nearly half of the country’s graduates remain unemployed, and employers consistently cite a shortage of skilled workers. Only a small fraction of young people receive vocational training, leaving millions unprepared for an evolving labour market.
With 1.8 million young people entering the job market each year, the country’s demographic advantage could soon turn into a liability. Continued inaction could shave more than one percent off annual GDP growth and push youth unemployment even higher.
A wake-up call for the nation
Bangladesh’s HSC results should serve as a national alarm bell. They reveal not just the failure of students but of the system itself — a system that for decades has valued numbers over knowledge, slogans over substance.
The tenure of the interim government, led by Muhammad Yunus — himself a former university teacher — is set to end in five months. Meaningful reform may not be possible within that short window, but it can still initiate a process to rescue the country’s collapsing education system.
A dedicated education reform commission — empowered to address teacher quality, curriculum overhaul, and equitable access — is not optional. It is the only way forward.
Growth on paper means little if the classrooms that produce future citizens are crumbling. Unless Bangladesh confronts its classroom crisis head-on, its dreams of progress will remain built on sand — strong in rhetoric, hollow in reality.
