Education System of Bangladesh: A Comparative Study with India

Bangladesh and India share more than just a border – they share a colonial past, similar socio-economic challenges, and a mutual interest in building strong public education systems. Yet the way each country has structured, governed, and reformed its education sector reveals striking differences, and equally striking opportunities to learn from each other. A closer comparative look at Bangladesh’s education system – its structure, challenges, and recent strides – offers valuable insights for educational administrators and policymakers on both sides of the border.

Overview of Bangladesh’s education system 🔗

Education in Bangladesh is administered by two key ministries: the Ministry of Education (MOE), which oversees secondary and higher education, and the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MOPME), which handles primary schooling and mass education programmes. The constitutional guarantee under Article 17 of the Bangladesh Constitution makes education free and compulsory for all children up to grade eight.

The schooling ladder runs as follows: one year of pre-primary, five years of primary (grades 1-5), three years of lower secondary (grades 6-8), two years of secondary (grades 9-10), two years of higher secondary (grades 11-12), and then university-level education. Three parallel streams run through this ladder simultaneously. As detailed in a policy analysis of Bangladesh’s education sector, these are: the state-run general education stream (Bengali medium), a private English-medium stream following British or American curricula, and the madrasa stream, which is further divided into Alia madrasas (which include secular subjects) and Qawmi madrasas (focused exclusively on religious education).

At the tertiary level, Bangladesh’s higher education sector comprises 43 public universities, 103 private universities, and 2 international universities, with public institutions heavily subsidised by the government. Students gain admission through competitive standardised tests, with minimal weight given to extracurricular profiles. With nearly 30 million students enrolled across all levels, Bangladesh operates one of the largest education systems in the world.

Governance and policy framework 🔗

The governance of primary education rests primarily with the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE), operating under MOPME, while secondary and higher education are managed through the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) under MOE. The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) is responsible for developing curricula and publishing standardised textbooks. Bangladesh conforms to the UN’s Education For All (EFA) objectives and has been progressively aligning its curriculum with the Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG-4) on quality education.

In 2010, Bangladesh introduced its first National Education Policy, which pushed for 12 years of free schooling and integrated computer education and life skills into the curriculum. More recently, in 2023, the government launched a Digital Education Strategy, introducing tablets, online classes, and mobile applications in schools – reflecting a deliberate push toward technology-integrated learning.

Comparing India and Bangladesh: governance, funding, and structure 🔗

Both countries inherited colonial education frameworks and have since built large, multi-tiered public education systems. However, the architecture of governance and funding differs in important ways.

Centralised vs. decentralised governance 🔗

India follows a concurrent list model – education is a shared responsibility between central and state governments, leading to significant variation in curriculum standards, languages of instruction, teacher salaries, and infrastructure quality across states. Bangladesh, by contrast, operates a more centralised system, with the Ministry of Education and MOPME setting unified national standards. This centralisation has its advantages – uniform curriculum rollout and faster policy implementation – but also creates bottlenecks and limits local adaptability.

India’s New Education Policy (NEP) 2020 brought significant structural changes, shifting to a 5+3+3+4 schooling structure and placing greater emphasis on competency-based learning, multilingualism, and vocational integration from early stages. Bangladesh has its own structural reforms underway, with the post-2024 interim government forming a commission to recommend comprehensive reforms – recognising that years of fragmentation and inequality have left the system in need of urgent overhaul.

Education spending and funding models 🔗

One of the sharpest differences lies in education expenditure. Bangladesh spends approximately 2% of its GDP on education – far below the UNESCO-recommended 4-6%. This is among the lowest in South Asia, and the resulting underfunding is visible in infrastructure deficits, outdated teaching resources, and inadequate teacher training. India’s public education spending has hovered around 2.9-3% of GDP – still below UNESCO’s benchmark, but relatively higher than Bangladesh’s allocation.

In both countries, government sources dominate education funding, though India has seen growing private sector involvement, particularly in higher education. Bangladesh’s private English-medium stream caters largely to affluent urban families, creating a visible quality gap between urban private schools and rural government institutions. This dual system deepens inequality rather than bridging it.

Key challenges in Bangladesh’s education system 🔗

Literacy rates and learning quality 🔗

Bangladesh has made commendable progress in expanding access to primary education, but translating enrolment into actual learning remains a challenge. According to data on Bangladesh’s education sector, the country spends around 2% of GDP on education, and many students – despite attending school – struggle to develop foundational skills in literacy and numeracy. The system remains heavily exam-oriented and rote-learning driven, leaving critical thinking and applied skills underdeveloped.

In terms of adult literacy, estimates place Bangladesh’s rate at roughly 74-77%, which is comparable to India’s but reflects very different trajectory speeds. Bangladesh has achieved rapid literacy gains over a short period, often driven not just by government schools but by the robust NGO sector.

Gender disparity in education 🔗

On gender parity in schooling, Bangladesh has achieved something remarkable – and something India can study closely. According to the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Gender Gap Report, Bangladesh achieved a 94% educational attainment score, reflecting near-full gender parity in secondary enrolment and 93% parity in literacy. In 2023, girls made up 54.84% of total enrolment at the secondary level, with a Gender Parity Index of approximately 1.21 – meaning more girls than boys are enrolled at this level.

India, by contrast, ranked 129th overall in the 2024 Global Gender Gap Report, with the gap between male and female literacy rates standing at 17.2 percentage points – placing India at 124th specifically on educational attainment. This is a striking contrast to its neighbour.

In Bangladesh, government-sponsored stipend programmes for girls, free tuition at the secondary level, and aggressive NGO interventions – particularly in rural areas – have driven this turnaround. Cultural barriers such as early marriage and economic pressures still persist, especially in rural pockets, but the policy infrastructure for girl-friendly schooling has clearly worked at scale.

By 2025, the WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report placed Bangladesh at 24th globally with a parity score of 77.5% – a leap of 75 positions in a single year – while India slipped to 131st with 64.4% parity. The report noted Bangladesh’s improvement as the largest year-over-year gain worldwide.

Infrastructure and urban-rural divide 🔗

Rural Bangladesh continues to face severe infrastructure deficits. Many government schools lack adequate classrooms, sanitation, and teaching materials. Children from low-income households, rural areas, and marginalised groups – including ethnic minorities and children with disabilities – frequently face access barriers. Teacher quality is another pressure point: a significant number of educators lack adequate training or professional development opportunities, and the teaching profession is often undervalued in terms of compensation and career prospects.

The brain drain problem compounds infrastructure challenges at the higher education level – over 60,000 Bangladeshi students studied abroad in 2022 alone, one of the highest rates in South Asia, reflecting dissatisfaction with local higher education quality.

The BRAC model: a global education innovation from Bangladesh 🔗

Perhaps Bangladesh’s most globally recognised contribution to education is the BRAC Education Programme (BEP). BRAC – the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee – began its educational activities in 1985 with just 22 one-room schools serving fewer than 700 children. Today, the programme operates across 470 of Bangladesh’s 490 upazilas (sub-districts), reaching nearly 1.3 million children annually. Over 14 million children have graduated from BRAC schools to date.

The BRAC model is built around a few core principles: flexible scheduling that suits rural family life, locally recruited and trained women teachers, small class sizes of 25-30 students, and school premises rented from the community to minimise capital costs. The programme specifically targets children excluded from formal schools – those from poor families, remote areas, urban slums, and ethnic minority communities. According to UNESCO’s literacy database, BRAC schools have consistently achieved better learning outcomes than many government schools in comparable settings.

BRAC has also pioneered innovative access solutions – including floating boat schools for flood-prone regions, mobile libraries, and during COVID-19, one-on-one phone lessons that began within two weeks of school closures. When schools finally reopened after 18 months of closure – among the longest closures globally – BRAC schools reported over 90% regular attendance and under 2% dropout, a remarkable achievement by any standard.

The BRAC model has since been replicated in Afghanistan, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, and Pakistan – a testament to its transportability and effectiveness. Even the Bangladesh government has adopted many of BRAC’s curriculum and teacher-training approaches into the formal system.

Lessons for India and collaborative opportunities 🔗

What India can learn from Bangladesh 🔗

India’s education system is vast and, in many ways, more resourced than Bangladesh’s – with globally ranked institutions and a large STEM talent pool. But several areas stand out where Bangladesh’s experience offers practical learning:

Girl-centric stipend and retention policies: Bangladesh’s conditional cash transfer and stipend programmes for girls have been among the most effective tools in closing the gender enrolment gap. India’s Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao initiative addresses similar goals, but the scale and depth of Bangladesh’s girl-retention mechanisms at the secondary level offer a more granular model worth examining.

NGO-government co-delivery of education: The symbiotic relationship between BRAC and Bangladesh’s Ministry of Primary and Mass Education demonstrates how government and civil society can co-deliver education without duplicating effort. India has a large NGO ecosystem – organisations like Pratham already mirror some BRAC principles through the ASER model – but the integration between non-formal and formal systems could be deepened, particularly for out-of-school children in tribal and remote regions.

Flexible, community-anchored schooling: The BRAC model’s insistence on community involvement in deciding school timings, locations, and teacher selection is something India’s rural schooling infrastructure – particularly under the Samagra Shiksha framework – can draw from. Rigid top-down implementation often misses the lived realities of marginalised communities.

Collaborative opportunities between India and Bangladesh 🔗

Given their shared historical and cultural inheritance, particularly in the Bengal region, India and Bangladesh have a natural foundation for educational collaboration. Joint teacher training programmes, shared research on multilingual education (relevant especially in border districts where Bengali speakers straddle both nations), and cross-border academic exchanges at the university level are all viable and underexplored pathways.

Both countries also face the challenge of improving higher education quality. Bangladesh’s low research output – contributing less than 0.2% of global research publications as of 2022 – and India’s similarly low research-to-GDP investment ratio point to a common need: investing in university research culture, reducing politicisation of academic appointments, and building industry-academia partnerships. Collaboration on regional education data systems and a unified quality-assurance mechanism for higher education – as researchers have proposed – could benefit both nations enormously.

The UNESCO project on strengthening education systems in Bangladesh to promote inclusion and equity highlights how digital literacy, mother-tongue-based multilingual education, and youth empowerment in crisis-affected regions are priority areas. These are not challenges unique to Bangladesh – they are South Asian challenges, and addressing them jointly makes more sense than addressing them in silos.

What do you think? Bangladesh has outpaced India significantly in educational gender parity despite having fewer resources – what specific policy mechanisms do you think India could realistically adapt from Bangladesh’s experience? And given the deep cultural and geographic ties between the two nations, what form of cross-border educational collaboration do you think would have the greatest impact on learning outcomes in South Asia?

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_in_Bangladesh
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4. https://inside-bangladesh.com/education-system-in-bangladesh/
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7. https://dailycountrytodaybd.com/story/bangladesh-surges-ahead-in-gender-parity-while-india-struggles-to-keep-pace:-insights-from-wef's-2025-report
8. https://www.tbsnews.net/thoughts/prioritising-education-system-reform-bangladesh-915656
9. https://www.brac.net/program/education/
10. https://www.uil.unesco.org/en/litbase/brac-education-programme-bangladesh
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12. https://www.eenet.org.uk/enabling-education-review/enabling-education-4/newsletter-4/4-10/
13. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-99-2185-0_6
14. https://core.unesco.org/en/project/2210114023