Bangladesh Raised a Generation That Can Pass Exams But Cannot Think

Fifty-five years after independence, Bangladesh still does not have a functioning education policy. It has documents. Eight of them, in fact, if you count every commission report from Kudrat-i-Khuda in 1972 to Kabir Chowdhury in 2010. It is said that each was written by serious people with genuine intent. Each gathered dust within years of its release, cancelled or quietly buried when a new government arrived, or a movement grew loud enough. The 2010 policy is the latest one: it too was neither formally cancelled nor fully implemented.

Now, in early 2026, Bangladesh has a new government. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party won the awaited general election, and its manifesto made education a central promise: 5 percent of GDP for the sector, curriculum reform, teacher recruitment on merit, universal technical education, free schooling for women through postgraduate level.

Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon, speaking at the Education World Forum in London in May 2026, described the government's commitment to a "learning with happiness" model. The Ministry released a 12-point reform agenda within weeks of taking office. Forty-three priority areas have been identified. Short, medium, and long-term plans are being drawn up.

The question is not whether these intentions are sincere. The question is whether they will survive contact with the same structural problems that consumed every previous effort. And to answer that, it is worth being precise about what Bangladesh's education system actually is, what it was built to do, and whom it has historically served.

"Our education system is in a state of ICU, if not ICU, then definitely CCU," declares Professor Moninoor Roshid of DU IER, his voice carrying the weariness of decades spent watching the system he loves slowly deteriorate.

He is not alone in his diagnosis. Speak to any educator in Bangladesh today, and you will hear variations of the same alarming prognosis: the patient is critical, and no one seems to agree on the cure.

The statistics tell a story of paradox. Bangladesh has made remarkable progress in access to education. Enrollment rates have soared. Literacy has climbed. More children are in school than ever before.

But access, it turns out, is not the same as quality.

What the Numbers Actually Say

Bangladesh's literacy rate stands at approximately 77.9 percent as of 2025. That sounds like progress, and in raw terms it is. In 1981, the figure was 29 percent. But literacy rates, by the minimalist definitions most national surveys use, measure whether someone can read a short sentence. They do not measure whether a student can do secondary-level mathematics, write a coherent argument, or operate software. On those measures, the picture is considerably darker.

Research conducted by the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) revealed that 43 percent of primary school children lack basic English literacy. Only 57 percent can recognise English alphabets at all. Four percent of public school students can interpret a simple English sentence. One percent of madrasa students can. These numbers did not change meaningfully from the 2017 assessment. The system ran for five more years and produced the same results.

At the secondary level, the dropout rate stands at 33 percent, according to the BANBEIS 2023 report. Between 2019 and 2022, secondary school enrolment dropped by 21.5 percent compared to the number of students completing primary education. Primary enrolment itself fell 7 percent in 2025 compared to 2024. Child labour accounts for 9.2 percent of dropouts.

Child marriage drives 38.9 percent of female dropouts. Out-of-pocket education costs for families rose 51 percent at the secondary level and 25 percent at the primary level in just the first half of one recent year, according to an Education Watch report. For a country whose constitution designates primary education as free and compulsory, this is a structural failure, not a marginal shortcoming.

Bangladesh's Human Capital Index score is 0.48. This is below the South Asian regional average. It is below Nepal's. No Bangladeshi university appears in the top 800 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2025. India has 22 universities in those rankings; Pakistan has nine. This is not a resource gap alone. It is a governance and prioritisation gap.

On spending, the figures are stark. Bangladesh allocates approximately 1.7 to 2 percent of GDP to education. The UNESCO benchmark is 4 to 6 percent. The revised education budget as a share of GDP actually fell from 1.9 percent in FY2020 to 1.52 percent in the FY2025 budget. Among Least Developed Countries, Bangladesh consistently ranked in the bottom three for education spending as a share of GDP between 2016 and 2023.

The World Bank recorded only Haiti and Somalia spending less. Senegal, with a GDP per capita of roughly half Bangladesh's, dedicated 5.3 percent of its GDP to education over the same period. Government expenditure on education as a share of total public expenditure dropped from about 12 percent in 2024 to 11.88 percent in 2025. Not only is the absolute figure low, the trend is downward.

Budget utilisation adds another layer of dysfunction. Development expenditure utilisation in the education sector fell from 102 percent in FY2010 to 79 percent in FY2023. Money that was allocated was not even spent.

This is the story of Bangladesh's education crisis, a crisis that manifests most dramatically when students leave school and enter university, only to discover they are completely unprepared for the intellectual demands of higher education.

"We are producing students who can pass exams but cannot think," says Professor M. Rezwan Khan of UIU. "They can recite textbooks verbatim but cannot analyze a single paragraph critically."

The Blame Game

Ask a university professor why first-year students struggle, and you will hear about the failures of the college system.

Ask a college principal, and they will point to the weaknesses of secondary education.

Ask a secondary school teacher, and they will blame primary schooling.

Ask a primary teacher, and they will tell you parents are not doing their job.

Everyone is pointing fingers. No one is taking responsibility.

"We are trapped in a blame game," Professor Roshid explains. "Everyone is accusing everyone else, but blame is not a solution. The question is: are we making the right decisions at the right time? Are we implementing proper reforms? Or are we just delivering political speeches?"

The pattern is painfully predictable. A student spends twelve years in a system that rewards memorization and punishes curiosity. They learn to repeat, not to understand. They master the art of the guidebook, not the skill of critical inquiry.

Then they arrive at university, where they are suddenly expected to think independently, analyze multiple perspectives, and construct original arguments.

The result is intellectual whiplash.

"The students aren't to blame," Professor Roshid insists. "This is the result of a long-standing structural system. Many students can't even understand how to think about a subject or express themselves in their own words."

Two Systems, Two Destinies

The contrast is stark when you compare students from different educational backgrounds.

Those who come through the Cambridge curriculum, with its emphasis on analysis and independent thought, typically adjust to university life within their first year. They have already been trained to engage with multiple sources, question assumptions, and construct reasoned arguments.

Those who come through the National Curriculum often take two or three years to catch up, if they ever do.

"Students from the Cambridge curriculum often say they feel comparatively less pressure in their first or second year," Professor Mojibur Rahaman observes. "Because they were already accustomed to an analytical and independent learning environment."

This is not just about language. It is about an entire way of thinking.

Many Bangladeshi students cannot write properly in their mother tongue. Sentence construction is poor. Spelling is weak. Expression is unclear.

And English? The situation is even worse.

"A large number of students don't want to read English books or use reference materials," Professor Roshid notes. "This becomes a major problem when they enter the job market or apply for higher education abroad."

The Language Barrier Within

Perhaps the most troubling observation comes from Professor Monira Jahan of JnU IER, who points out a fundamental irony: students are struggling to express themselves in their own language.

"We often see that many students can't write beautifully in their mother tongue," she says. "They have problems with basic sentence construction. Their sentence-making skills are not at the expected level."

This is not a trivial concern. Language is the foundation of thought. If you cannot express yourself clearly, can you think clearly?

The problem compounds. Students avoid challenging texts. They stick to simplified guidebooks. They memorize, they reproduce, but they never truly engage.

"When they take a job or apply for higher education abroad, they have to struggle much more," Professor Jahan observes.

A System Without Vision

Why does this problem persist? The answers, according to the experts, point to a deeper crisis: Bangladesh has no clear national education vision.

"We still haven't clearly determined what kind of students we want to create," Professor Roshid admits.

His colleague, Mohammad Mojibur Rahman of DU IER, puts it even more bluntly: "We talk about curriculum, we talk about policy, but we never determine what the ultimate goal of education should be."

This is not just an academic debate. Without a clear vision, every reform becomes a random act. Syllabi change, textbooks change, exam systems change, but nothing fundamental improves.

"We've had multiple commissions and curriculum changes," Professor Rahman says. "But each new government cancels the previous one's work. We've never had continuity."

The Cost of Chaos

The human cost of this chaos is visible in every university classroom. Imagine a student who has spent years being told that success means memorizing the right answers. They arrive at university and are asked to ask questions instead.

The student freezes. They don't know how to think. They don't know how to question. They have never been taught. This is not a personal failing. It is a structural failure of the entire education system. "The students aren't at fault," Professor Rahman repeats. "We are."

What the Experts Want

So what would a better system look like?

Professor Roshid offers one crucial recommendation: students should be prepared from the very beginning to adapt to future challenges. They should not be shocked when they encounter higher education. They should be ready for it.

This means teaching them to think, not just to memorize. It means encouraging curiosity, not punishing it. It means valuing understanding over repetition.

But this requires a fundamental shift in how Bangladesh approaches education, a shift that cannot happen without clear national leadership.

"We need a clear national vision and human resource plan," Professor Roshid insists. "Only then can we begin to reconstruct the entire education system."

Bangladesh's education system is not failing because students are lazy or teachers are incompetent. It is failing because it was designed to produce obedient memorizers, not independent thinkers.

The system is stuck in the past, preparing students for a world that no longer exists. The question is not whether reform is needed. The question is whether Bangladesh has the will to undertake it.

As Professor Rahman put it: "If the craftsman is not right, it's impossible to create something good. And right now, our teachers are underpaid, overworked, and undervalued."

Until the craftsman is fixed, the product will remain broken.

Next in this series: how eight commissions, spanning five decades, produced volumes of recommendations and almost nothing else.