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🇧🇩 Bangladesh /Culture & Society

Bangladesh Urged to Strengthen Education for Economic Growth

From Daily Star · () English

Translated from English, summarized and contextualized by DistantNews.

At a glance

News Named sources Context piece
  • Speakers at an event in Dhaka called for strengthening Bangladesh's human capital through better education and skills development.
  • The current education system is failing to translate academic progress into necessary knowledge and skills for a complex economy.
  • Issues include a shortage of qualified teachers, insufficient STEM and vocational graduates, and the need for improved foundational learning.

Bangladesh faces a critical challenge in its human capital development, with experts urging a comprehensive overhaul of the education system to build a more robust economy. Speakers at an event in Dhaka highlighted that despite expanded access to education, the country struggles to convert academic years into tangible knowledge, skills, and productivity.

From primary school to university, the biggest problem in our education system is that we do not have qualified teachers.

— Mahbub UllahIdentifying a core issue within Bangladesh's education system.

The inaugural public lecture, titled “Education for a Robust Economy: Skills, Languages, and Global Mobility,” organized by the Education Reform Initiative, brought together academics and policymakers. Economist Prof M Niaz Asadullah, presenting the keynote, pointed out that Bangladesh lags behind complex economies in crucial areas. These include tertiary education, STEM graduates, technical and vocational education participation, and foreign-language proficiency.

The decline in this year’s SSC and equivalent examination results reflected the education system’s actual condition and should not be concealed through inflated results.

— ANM Ehsanul Hoque MilonAcknowledging the poor performance in recent examinations as indicative of systemic problems.

Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon acknowledged the system's shortcomings, citing the decline in this year's Secondary School Certificate (SSC) results as a reflection of the true condition of the education system. He stressed the importance of accurate data for effective policy interventions and stated that institutions with no student passing would face government action. Milon also called for improving existing universities before approving new ones and advocated for teaching languages beyond English to prepare Bangladeshis for international job markets.

We have to repair the full chain of human-capital production, not one link in between.

— Prof M Niaz AsadullahEmphasizing the need for a holistic approach to improving human capital.

Mahbub Ullah, a National Professor, identified the lack of qualified teachers across all educational levels as the primary problem. Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir, an adviser to the prime minister, outlined three key issues: inclusion error, exclusion error, and fragmentation within the education sector. He urged for time-bound measures rather than abrupt reforms to repair the entire human-capital production chain, from schooling to productivity.

Can Bangladesh become AI-ready without first becoming learning-ready?

— Prof M Niaz AsadullahPosing a rhetorical question about the prerequisites for technological advancement.
DistantNews Editorial

Originally published by Daily Star in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized by our editorial team with added local perspective. Read our editorial standards.

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