WB approves $300m to help Bangladesh improve secondary education

The Board of Executive Directors of the World Bank has approved $300 million to help Bangladesh recover from learning losses incurred during the Covid-19 pandemic. The support will also introduce complementary online learning blended with in-class education to build system resilience, improve learning outcomes and teaching quality and reduce the dropout rate in secondary education.

Bangladesh has achieved remarkable success in gender parity in school enrolment with more girls in school than boys and we now have one of the robust primary education systems in the world with an estimated 17 million primary school aged children, thanks to the ceaseless efforts of the government to ensure access to education for all. Indeed, such statistics bear the testimony of the country’s enviable success in the field of primary education. However, at the same time it is also true that we still lag far behind other developed countries in terms of ensuring quality education.

For ensuring quality education there is no 

alternative to enabling a 

healthy and 

gender-inclusive environment in the education 

sector

Question leak, unskilled teachers and inconsistency between the education system and job sector, low budgetary allocation are the main factors overwhelming our education sector for long. Many young students in Bangladesh, as in other low and middle-income countries, find it hard to get good jobs because of the sheer inconsistency between the education system and job market. 

The country should address this crisis by investing more in education and ensuring effective utilisation of the investment. We have long been longing for revamp and rectification of our education sector. We hope, the government will give its best to ensure quality education for all. To ensure quality education and create a skilled workforce Bangladesh should look forward to attaining a higher budgetary allocation for its education sector.

Quality education is a right not a privilege. The right to education is not only the right to access to education but also the right to receive quality education. For ensuring quality education there is no alternative to enabling a healthy and gender-inclusive environment in the education sector. 

Quality education requires relevant, strategic and well-researched curricula and materials for the acquisition of basic skills. There must be a procedure through which trained teachers can incorporate child-centred teaching approaches. Taking all these into consideration, authorities concerned should work to address the barriers towards ensuring quality in education and devise required actions to fix them.