Arafat Rahaman
Flagship reporting case study

Bangladesh education in 2025: a system-wide year of disruption

A year-end reporting case study connecting teacher protests, textbook delays, examination results, budget choices and university developments across Bangladesh's education system.

Reporting question

What the reporting set out to establish

What did a year of disputes and policy reversals reveal about the governance of Bangladesh's education system?

Approach

How the story was reported

Rather than treating each protest, examination result or policy change as a separate episode, the report assembled them into a system-wide chronology. It combined field accounts from families, national teacher-action figures, examination outcomes, budget data and expert interviews across primary, secondary and higher education.

Evidence

Key evidence used

  • A nationwide primary-teacher strike affected all 65,567 government primary schools and about one crore students during the year.
  • The HSC pass rate fell to 58.83 percent, while the SSC pass rate reached a 16-year low.
  • Primary-education allocation fell by more than Tk 3,000 crore in FY2025-26, while the overall education budget was reported at 1.72 percent of GDP.
Why it matters

What this adds

The value of the year-end view is cumulative. It allows classroom disruption, teacher conditions, learning results and public spending to be considered together rather than as unrelated news events.

About this page

This is a portfolio case study, not a replacement publication of the original article. It adds reporting context and evidence notes while preserving a direct link to The Daily Star version.