Education and economic progress go hand in hand

While Bangladesh has taken great strides towards economic growth, one of its biggest successes has to be in achieving gender parity in education, with more girls in school than boys. 

However, when it comes to the quality of education being provided, we have unfortunately fallen far behind, with 35% of third grade students scoring too low in reading comprehension in Bangla, and with only 25% of the nation’s fifth grade students able to pass the minimum threshold in mathematics.

What this indicates, and what a World Bank study has confirmed, is that too many of our children are coming out from school without the basic skills required to succeed in the job market. 

While the progress we have made so far is all well and good, for it to be sustainable, we need to invest in the future, and a big part of that is ensuring that our children are part of a quality education system.

In this regard too, we have failed, with our investment in education being one of the lowest in the region.

We not only need to increase investment in the education sector, but we also need to ensure that it is being invested in the right places, with this being a long-term assurance for the people of this country.

As it stands, too many of our children, especially from poor and vulnerable backgrounds, are left behind, and the long-term impacts of this are significant for the future development of this country.

Moving forward, Bangladesh must understand that economic progress and our education sector go hand in hand; without investment in one, we cannot progress much further in the other.