In Bangladesh, education remains a vital pathway for social and economic development, yet millions of children still face barriers to accessing quality learning. Chronic underinvestment and the lack of strong legal obligations have limited the system's ability to provide equitable opportunities for all. While education is recognised as a key driver of national progress, gaps in funding and policy implementation continue to influence who benefits from it. Addressing these challenges is essential not only for securing the future of every child but also for building a more just, inclusive, and prosperous Bangladesh.
Why adequate public finance in education is necessary
Public financing is the lifeblood of an equitable education system. It ensures that access to quality learning does not depend on a family's income, gender, or geographic location. Adequate and predictable funding enables governments to recruit and retain qualified teachers, build safe and inclusive learning environments, and provide essential learning materials for all. Without sufficient public investment, the education system becomes dependent on private contributions, pushing the poor further to the margins.
In Bangladesh, where 27.93 percent (PPRC, 2025) of the population still lives below the poverty line, public education is supposed to serve as the great equaliser. However, when the state fails to allocate adequate funds, schools in poorer areas fall into decay, teacher–student ratios widen, and children from disadvantaged communities, e.g., rural, indigenous, char (riverine island), haor (freshwater wetland ecosystem), CHT, tea garden or urban slum dwellers, face learning environments that severely limit their potential. Education thus becomes less of a right and more of a privilege for those who can afford it.
What the global benchmarks say about public financing in education
Internationally, UNESCO's Education 2030 Framework for Action recommends that governments allocate at least 4–6 percent of GDP and/or 15–20 percent of total public expenditure to education. These figures are not arbitrary; they are the global benchmarks required to maintain a functional, equitable education system capable of meeting Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all.
Over the past ten years, Bangladesh's education budget has remained stagnant in both relative and absolute terms. Although total allocations have increased numerically, they have failed to keep pace with inflation, population growth, and the expanding needs of the education sector.
Many developing nations have made significant strides towards these targets. For instance, Vietnam, a country with a comparable socioeconomic background, invests around 5 percent of its GDP in education, while Nepal allocates 3.5 to 5 percent. These investments have translated into better learning outcomes, reduced dropout rates, and improved gender parity.
The state of public financing in education over the last decade
Bangladesh lags far behind the recommended benchmarks, allocating consistently around 1.7–2.0 percent of GDP and roughly 11–13 percent of total government expenditure to education over the past decade. Bangladesh's education expenditure as a percentage of GDP was 1.8 percent in FY2019, the lowest among 28 LDCs and the second lowest among 104 countries of the world (CPD report).
This chronic underinvestment is symptomatic of a deeper policy failure: the unwillingness to treat education as a long-term national investment rather than a short-term expenditure. Over the past ten years, Bangladesh's education budget has remained stagnant in both relative and absolute terms. Although total allocations have increased numerically, they have failed to keep pace with inflation, population growth, and the expanding needs of the education sector.
This decade of fiscal stagnation has coincided with mounting challenges: learning loss due to COVID-19, growing teacher shortages, dilapidated infrastructure, and widening urban–rural disparities. Moreover, the growing dominance of private tutoring and the mushrooming of private schools reflect the vacuum created by inadequate public provision. Families are increasingly shouldering the financial burden of education, turning what should be a public good into a private commodity.
Countries like India have enacted the Right to Education Act (2009), mandating specific budgetary and implementation obligations on the state. Bangladesh, however, still lacks such a binding legal instrument. Parliamentary oversight of education budgets remains weak, and public participation in budget formulation or monitoring is minimal. Without legal and institutional mechanisms that allow citizens to demand adequate funding, education financing will remain at the mercy of political discretion.
Strengthening accountability requires several steps, such as introducing a Right to Education Act, institutionalising a strong civil society coalition on education, citizens' education budget forums, strong voices from Teachers' Unions, ensuring transparent reporting on education expenditures, and empowering local government bodies to oversee education delivery and resource use.
Discriminations stemming from inadequate public funding
Bangladesh has indeed made progress in terms of access. Enrolment in primary education has reached near-universal levels, and gender parity has been largely achieved. However, these gains mask deep-seated inequities in quality and outcomes. Learning assessments repeatedly show that a significant proportion of students fail to acquire basic competencies in reading, writing, and arithmetic. According to the National Student Assessment (NSA, 2022), about 50 percent of students in grades 3 and 5 demonstrated grade-level proficiencies in Bangla, while 39 percent of grade 3 students and 30 percent of grade 5 students demonstrated grade-level proficiencies in mathematics. This learning crisis is a direct outcome of fiscal neglect—overcrowded classrooms, underpaid and undertrained teachers, and insufficient learning materials. Moreover, marginalised groups, e.g., ethnic minorities, children with disabilities, and those from remote areas, continue to face systemic exclusion. In effect, the right to education remains nominal, not substantive.
Low allocations for inclusive education mean limited investment in accessible infrastructure, assistive devices, and teacher training. As a result, students with disabilities remain excluded from mainstream classrooms, face persistent learning barriers, and have fewer opportunities for future employment and social inclusion.
Inadequate public funding has led to the unequal distribution of educational resources, leaving schools in remote char, haor, hilly, and tea garden areas severely under-resourced. Poor infrastructure, insufficient teachers, and the lack of basic facilities limit access to quality education, isolating children both physically and culturally, and deepening the rural–urban learning divide.
Insufficient public investment shifts the financial burden of education onto families, disproportionately affecting low-income households. Many children from poor families start school unprepared, face higher dropout risks, and have little access to secondary or vocational education. This perpetuates intergenerational poverty and reinforces economic inequality.
Underfunded schools often lack gender-sensitive infrastructure such as separate toilets, menstrual hygiene facilities, and safety provisions, discouraging girls' attendance—especially in rural and conservative areas. Combined with financial hardship and restrictive social norms, these gaps contribute to higher dropout rates among girls and limit their access to secondary and higher education.
Low allocations for inclusive education mean limited investment in accessible infrastructure, assistive devices, and teacher training. As a result, students with disabilities remain excluded from mainstream classrooms, face persistent learning barriers, and have fewer opportunities for future employment and social inclusion.
Inadequate funding for multilingual and culturally relevant education marginalises indigenous and ethnic minority children, particularly in the Chittagong Hill Tracts and northern regions. The lack of trained teachers and learning materials in local languages leads to poor retention, disengagement, and lower academic performance.
Limited public investment in ICT infrastructure and teacher capacity has widened the digital gap. Students in rural or low-income communities lack devices, connectivity, and digital literacy opportunities, leaving them far behind urban learners—especially after the pandemic's shift towards technology-based education.
The coexistence of multiple, unequally funded school systems, e.g., government, private, madrasa, and NGO-run, creates structural inequality in curriculum quality, teacher competence, and learning outcomes. Government Primary School, High School Attached Primary School, and private school students performed better than the national average across both grades in both subjects. However, students in madrasahs performed significantly below all other school types across the grades and subjects (NSA, 2022). Children from affluent families benefit from private or English-medium schools with superior resources, while poorer children are confined to under-resourced government schools, perpetuating social and economic divides.
Key Recommendations
Constitutional recognition and legislation on the right to education: Recognise education as a fundamental human right in the constitution instead of a basic principle, and enact a comprehensive Right to Education Act that clearly defines the state's legal, financial, and institutional obligations to ensure free, equitable, and quality education for all children.
Increase investment: Raise education spending to at least 4% of GDP and 20% of the national budget within the next five to seven years, in line with UNESCO benchmarks.
Enhance policy coordination: Strengthen coordination among the MoE, MoPME, and the Finance Division to align annual development and operational budgets with national education priorities.
Reform fiscal priorities: Reallocate underutilised or low-impact expenditures towards education and human capital development to improve fiscal efficiency.
Adopt equity-based financing: Introduce needs-based and equity-weighted allocation formulas, ensuring higher per-student spending in disadvantaged districts, rural, char, haor, CHT, tea garden areas, and urban slums. Integrate gender-responsive and disability-inclusive budgeting across all education sector plans.
Invest in teachers: Ensure competitive pay, job security, and continuous professional development to attract and retain qualified teachers. Scale up pre- and in-service training focusing on child-centred pedagogy, digital literacy, inclusive education, and disaster resilience.
Ensure public accountability: Require non-state providers, e.g., private and NGO-run schools, to complement, not substitute, the public system, upholding the state's responsibility for free and equitable education. Make education budgeting open and participatory, involving local education offices, teachers' associations, SMCs, and civil society.
Strengthen accountability mechanisms and transparency: Institutionalise social audits, participatory budgeting, and citizen scorecards at upazila and district levels to improve oversight and reduce leakages. Develop public education expenditure dashboards for real-time tracking of resource allocation and spending.
Empower local oversight: Grant local governments, school management committees, and parent–teacher associations greater authority and capacity to monitor education funds.
Leverage partnerships responsibly: Engage development partners, CSR initiatives, and ethical private actors in innovative financing models, while ensuring that public financing remains the backbone and that external funds do not distort equity or policy priorities.
Khandaker Lutful Khaled is an education and child rights activist and a former staff member of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF).
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