Essay Issue 2 — November 2023
Education Reform in Bangladesh and Disenfranchised Policy Analysis
By S. B. Shams
Research efforts in reforming Bangladesh’s education system typically overlooks social, cultural, and historical contexts. Policy analysts and researchers establish correlations between specific indicators or attributes of programs and projects instead of investigating the root causes of disparities. In these studies, issues related to infrastructure needs, such as lack of libraries, electricity or washrooms, get priority, with the assumption that they hinder students’ progress. In aid evaluations, studies tend to prioritize enrolments while neglecting quality, processes, and outcomes. When measuring education outcomes, such as enrollment, completion, and years of schooling, it’s important to note that these indicators are closely related, and they essentially measure the quantity of education received rather than the quality. Proxy indicators like pupil-teacher ratio, types of schools, and repetition rates are often used instead of direct indicators to evaluate educational quality. However, it’s essential to remember that while these indicators can provide insights into sub-sector efficiency, they don’t necessarily reflect education quality. These policy studies examine the design aspects of different programs, projects, and activities in the education sector in Bangladesh. Furthermore, these analyses were restricted to evaluating the efficiency of current policies instead of conducting critical research to guide policy development. These policy analysis reports merely produce vast amounts of papers, publications, and visuals, filling online spaces, conferences, and seminars.
Education policy research centers around critical matters such as enhancing education systems, constructing inclusive infrastructure, establishing successful schools, encouraging exceptional teaching, and implementing decentralized approaches. The principal objective of these assessments is to provide policymakers with valuable insights that can ultimately enhance the quality and efficacy of education delivery. Nonetheless, in practice, these recommendations merely propose minor and incremental modifications to current programs or initiatives without offering solutions to the fundamental social, political, and economic frameworks perpetuating student educational inequalities. According to researcher Laura Hilger, incrementalism may work for states with successful past policies. However, a polity like Bangladesh cannot apply gradual reform decisions due to its history of flawed practices and unsuccessful policies.
‘School effectiveness’ has become a popular topic in education policy discussions worldwide, driven mainly by the middle class in developed countries. This concept has been marketed as a commodity to developing nations, with entrepreneurs in the global education industry offering services to enhance education quality. However, many experts argue that the primary goal of assessing school effectiveness is determining (only) where to aim for aid-supported interventions. Furthermore, the concept of school effectiveness lacks context and complexity, leading to judgment based on technical reductionism and disciplinary measures that obscure unequal education delivery and shift blame to schools, learners, teachers, and parents. As a result, the focus on “school effectiveness” by education entrepreneurs worldwide has become a way to improve the education quality for the middle class of all countries, whose imagined futures and those of their children are threatened by quality failures in public education.
Numerous school effectiveness research initiatives are currently underway in Bangladesh. These investigations seek to analyze a wide range of factors that have an impact on learning outcomes, including reading habits, the extent to which students read non-textbook materials at home, the quality of school leadership provided by headteachers and school management, the number of days schools remain open, and the level of engagement demonstrated by SMCs (School Management Committees) and whatnot. These studies often use surveys and extensive research to identify areas where improvements can be made to enhance overall school effectiveness. However, by design, they do not attempt to determine the root causes of learning disparities.
Existing studies have primarily identified issues with teachers in countries like Bangladesh where there is a lack of qualified or skilled teachers. Policy analyses highlight that teachers’ abilities are increasingly linked to education outcomes. The scarcity of proper training for teachers is often cited as a significant obstacle to quality education. Foreign researchers and academics who have little understanding of the local contexts blame inadequate teacher supervision. According to them, the low quality of education in Bangladesh can also be attributed to teachers’ unions and power dynamics. There are policy analysts who also argue that holding teachers accountable for their actions in the classroom would lead to improvement in education quality. In the same breadth, they have identified several reasons for this phenomenon: inadequate teacher accountability, ineffective management, limited teacher-student contact hours, teacher shortages, and poorly trained teachers. Unsurprisingly, to achieve quality education, the recommended policy measures include increasing teacher training, regularly revising curricula, and providing teachers with financial incentives. Yet, what has been observed is that solely blaming low-quality teachers and excessive monitoring of teaching negatively affects teacher autonomy and produces little positive results.
Freya Perry and Ahsan Habib are two researchers who study the education system and teachers’ role in Bangladesh. They view the Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP) 3 in Bangladesh as having adopted a narrow definition of teacher quality, giving more importance to qualifications without considering the teaching contexts. According to Perry, qualifications are treated as a superficial indicator, including certificates of degrees and training. This approach is a failure of both the government and development partners of PEDP 3 to recognise the importance of the comprehensive process of pedagogy. They have also independently discussed two social phenomena that hinder the delivery of education by teachers. The two main concerns in teaching are social structural issues and teachers’ personal attributes/values. The first issue involves teachers’ autonomy in teaching and building relationships with families and communities. The second issue relates to the impact of socioeconomic and cultural contexts on teachers’ personal traits and values. Perry argues that new and accentuated teacher training without addressing these two barriers can lead to feelings of inadequacy and loss of motivation among teachers when they face challenges implementing new practices (learnt from new series of training) within their specific context. While teachers have a crucial role in students’ learning, expecting them to address or overcome deep-seated historical and structural societal inequalities is unrealistic, as Perry highlights in her research.
The audit industry for policies is actively exploring methods to introduce decentralization in the management and governance of education. This is crucial for the education aid industry as it meets local aid managers’ requirements. However, some academics argue that policymakers from the government and donors are not prioritizing comprehensive decentralization to overhaul political power and authority. Instead, they perceive it as a way to enhance stakeholder involvement in government-driven initiatives backed by aid, at the minimum. Policy studies have shown that decentralization can particularly benefit impoverished rural communities. Unfortunately, limited opportunities for community involvement and representation in school affairs can prevent these benefits from being fully realized. In some cases, the local elite may restrict the participation of the broader community, hindering progress. These concerns were raised by Joris Vlieghe and Piotr Zamojski in 2019. Furthermore, Antoni Verger has noted that the donor community may not have the necessary resources to address local capacity constraints effectively, exacerbating the situation.
However, a few approaches to decentralization have emerged in education aid in Bangladesh, which are by default prolonged, discrete, half-hearted and less persuasive, such as the provision of direct grants to schools to support school-level improvement plans following Primary Standard Quality Level (PSQL) and Upazila Primary Education Plan (UPEP).
It’s worth noting that during the initial phase of PEDP 1, nearly two decades ago, PSQL, School Level Implementation Plan (SLIP), and UPEP were established with the aim of decentralizing education management at the local and school levels. However, when PEDP I’s progress was evaluated, reports indicated that advancements in these areas were slower compared to the accomplishments in infrastructure and teacher training.
Consequently, PEDP II de-prioritized these components, yet failed to address why central bureaucracies were disassociating themselves from them. For instance, the inclusion of headteachers in the education management structure and the encadering of education proved to be unsuccessful, while the entry of college teachers in higher education received more attention.
In PEDP III, decentralization became purely a theoretical concept, as the allocation of funds was supposed to be linked to PSQL and SLIP, but in practice, this never materialized. These elements became mere monitoring exercises, with UPEP being almost entirely disregarded. It has been viewed as a gradual withdrawal of donors from the agenda of significant reform, resulting in a return to the status quo.
Too many policy analysts and researchers blame families and students for the system’s shortcomings. A study by Sam Hickey and Naomi Hossain in 2019 found that policymakers often attribute ineffective education reform to underfunded systems focusing only on first-generation learners. This approach assumes that parents of these students lack education or interest in their children’s education, hindering efforts to improve the quality of education in schools. Such assumptions impede research efforts which aim to identify and address the root causes of educational challenges.
Formulating education policies in countries like Bangladesh involves policy analysts dominated by donor-public partnerships. Providing opportunities for independent academics, local experts, and national scholars to participate in decision-making has become increasingly difficult. This arena is mainly dominated by pre-selected consulting firms or local civil society-led platforms with connections to donors and senior government officials. Funding recipients are chosen based on their adherence to international best practices and their alignment with the prevailing policy paradigm and regulatory framework at the national or regional level.
According to David Lewis, an expert on Bangladesh, a significant portion of global aid is allocated to private-sector consultants and accounting firms which specialize in education delivery, information systems, and cost-benefit analysis. They may have little knowledge of social or human development contexts. As pointed out by Huriya Jabbar, international aid and philanthropic donations can have an impact on policy-making by creating “knowledge communities” and exerting “soft power”.
Consultants involved in Technical Assistance (TA) programs in Bangladesh conduct policy analyses with the objective of driving reforms, and these efforts receive substantial backing from both the government bureaucracy and donors. Nonetheless, research initiatives in Bangladesh involve foreign academics and consultants who may not possess sufficient familiarity with the local circumstances. Such a mismatch could hinder the quality and applicability of the research findings.
There is another dimension specific to the particularities of a country. Elite researchers and consultants often repeat government policies without engaging in productive or critical discussions. Typically, this selected group secures contracts for conducting policy studies, providing consulting services, and conducting research projects.
Often, practicality decides. Procuring consultancy services in Bangladesh can be challenging due to strict government regulations. When adhering to government and donor procurement guidelines, acquiring funds for consultancy services can become more challenging due to unnecessary complexities. Government officials tend to prefer established international companies, retired officials, reputable consultants from public universities, and entities endorsed by development partners. As a result, consultancy communities with these qualifications have a greater chance of securing contracts.
The Bangladesh government has recently developed new policies for pre-primary education, which all major donors in the education sector in Bangladesh have supported. The government included these policies in documents such as the National Education Policy and then deployed teachers for pre-primary education in a limited number of schools. Donors later incorporated these policies in SWAp (sector-wide approach) and other capacity-building projects. Michela Profeta investigated the identities of the policy entrepreneurs involved in this matter. She found that the group consisted of retired government officials, academics close to donors and government, and development agencies. She referred to this group as the “national elite”. However, she could not find evidence of the involvement of primary stakeholders, such as teachers and families, in developing policies for pre-primary education in Bangladesh. According to her, the pre-primary education policy in Bangladesh was developed without the involvement of independent academics, local experts, and national scholars/philosophers who could have provided valuable insights and perspectives. She explained that even officials at the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education (MoPME) of the Bangladesh government were not adequately informed . She further characterized this policy process as a “mismatch between policymakers and policy getters.”
What’s evident is that education policies in Bangladesh lack proper diagnosis and offer limited solutions, resulting in ineffective recommendations. A comprehensive understanding of systemic risks and functional threats is necessary to address the root cause of issues and make policy analyses effective. National policies and practices in Bangladesh, such as the Education Sector Plan, Education Sector Analysis, and sectoral plan documents created by the government and donors, are often developed without a clear theoretical foundation or a comprehensive understanding of the political landscape. Furthermore, they frequently lack a series of ethnographic revelations.
Scholars like Stephen J. Ball have identified a global trend of policy formulation in a donor-driven environment. According to him, educational policy studies have produced many primarily descriptive concepts disconnected from any coherent explanatory or predictive framework. Michelle D. Young and Sarah Diem also argue that educational policy analysis relies excessively on narrow theoretical frameworks, limiting its applicability. This is why many policy recommendations focus on inputs rather than outcomes, which can result in policymakers implementing minor adjustments and supposed reforms that may not lead to genuine progress. Consequently, recent sectoral plans in Bangladesh, including the PEDP and those overseen by the World Bank or ADB for secondary education have stressed the significance of integrated EMIS (Education Management Information System) and the creation of new plan documents. In this way, policy managers receive their terms of reference for ‘managed’ improvements to enhance education governance. However, the real issues of learning disparities and overall quality of education remain unaddressed.
Educational institutions worldwide have recently become increasingly similar due to the influence of development partners and private investments. Privatization, universal minimum education, and neoliberal policy discourses have become dominant and formed a widely accepted global framework. In fact, the government of Bangladesh has adopted this but prioritizes policies that align with their own preferences.
Donor countries frequently exert their own agendas on recipients by utilizing hierarchical authority. This authority typically involves the highest-level decision-makers within the selected country’s government. The term “partnership” is often utilized as a guise for a more intricate process at this level, as opposed to a true expression of mutual interest. Consequently, the goals, objectives, and standards of donor and international agency hierarchies drive the dissemination of aid, which is then sanctioned and implemented by national authorities. Policy studies are conducted as a means to serve the mutual interests of both parties within this process. Donors tend to prioritize their own goals rather than focusing on the actual needs of the situation when providing aid in Bangladesh. This behavior is supported by commissioned policy studies or analyses, which legitimize their actions.
According to Abbey Riddell and Miguel Niño-Zarazúa, politicians in Bangladesh tend to prefer investing in the construction of schools or increasing access to them, as these measures are more likely to secure votes. However, improving the quality of education is a much more difficult task which requires a longer time to observe. As a result, the quality of education in public schools has not improved as expected, and middle-class families have started withdrawing their children from the public school system, leaving behind poorer families who have a more challenging time expressing their concerns about the education their children receive.
DFID, one of the donors of Bangladesh’s PEDP-3 plan, considers completing Grade 5 a crucial indicator. DFID’s mid-line report applauds the program’s success in surpassing the target of this indicator four years ahead of schedule. The politicians, ministers, and bureaucrats who wield power in the Bangladeshi government are focused on achieving policy satisfaction by increasing the pass rates of all formal and final exams, providing a plethora of certificates, undertaking infrastructure expansion projects, and offering a few social safety nets for education. Despite these efforts, Bangladesh ranks in the lowest quintile for international primary education indicators, with a significant increase in unemployed graduates.
Education aid programs in Bangladesh tend to prioritize measuring intervention outcomes rather than gaining a deeper understanding of the country’s social and economic realities. The prevailing positivist approach often relies on a representative sample size to generalize information, but it has limitations as it fails to capture the diversity of voices. Instead, it prioritizes conforming to positivistic versions of arguments, which can lead to a false reality and avoid fundamental analysis.
Improving human capital is a focal point in both government and donor literature. It concerns the skills and values individuals acquire related to their productive capacity. Education aims to provide skills and knowledge for local and global markets while developing consumers for locally linked global markets through primary education. Market-driven indicators are being used to define quality education and which are being promoted by organizations such as the World Bank, IMF and WTO. Education businesses and markets are significant and impactful for economies like those of English-speaking developed countries like the UK, the USA, Australia, Canada, and other new centers. International education has played a crucial role in Australia’s economy, becoming its third-largest export after iron ore and coal, earning AU$40.3 billion in 2019.
When examining education policies, it is crucial to consider the lack of national contemplation on international education. Experts have observed that not enough attention is given to the global connections of the education sector and how they influence decision-making at a national level. Bangladesh’s policy environment that determines education reform rarely addresses this worldwide phenomenon. It is never taken into account in the framework of analysis. Often, the agenda is owned but neglected in research design.
The Bangladesh government has hosted policy analysts, consultants, and researchers who believe that the supposed neutrality of global policies can legitimize the political agenda of the ruling elite in the country.
D.S.G. Carter and M.H. O’Neill have summarized five critical elements of “the new orthodoxy” in education policy that shape the nature of education reform policy analyses. These include improving national economics through a stronger connection between schooling, employment, productivity, and trade; enhancing student outcomes in employment-related skills and competencies; achieving more direct control over curriculum content and assessment; reducing the costs to the government of education; and increasing community input into education through more significant involvement in school decision-making and the pressure of market choice. However, this ‘the new orthodoxy’ framework overlooks learners’ perspectives, teacher autonomy, and critical social theories. Bangladesh is no exception.
James Albright and Allan Luke have criticized the current research regime in literacy education for its repetitiveness and tendency to focus on familiar issues, such as troubled students, frustrated teachers, and declining standards. As a result, recommendations often include increased testing, marketisation of education, and enhancing accountability and monitoring at all levels. Furthermore, many new training initiatives for teachers and education managers aim to return to the basics of reading and writing.
Harry Daniels, Hugh Lauder, and Jill Porter suggest that the state theory of learning involves repeated testing and rating of schools to improve education standards, similar to how companies are judged on profits. However, Albright and Luke view these as impositions and a continuation of “neoconservative educational fundamentalism and economic and bureaucratic rationalism in the delivery of the basics.”
International education policies now prioritize development models aligned with the interests of developed countries. Education is seen as a form of production, and teaching is considered a ‘hard’ service. The international community has established standard education priorities through donor coordination and innovative aid modalities. According to Robin Shields, Professor of Education at the University of Bristol donors claim to know how to achieve development. The education system is designed to create equitable access, but vertical equality remains stagnant. The market is shadowed by humanism, which confuses education as neither a fruit of development nor a driver of development but as the development itself. Similarly, Bangladesh’s education policies mainly focus on the education system’s administrative, governance, and internal efficiency. These analyses are predominantly driven by donor partners and the government and conducted by consultants.
Perry, alongside Bangladeshi scholars Ahsan Habib and Saira Hossain, highlighted the “lack of sense of belonging” issue among Bangladesh’s primary and secondary school students through their research paper. Students from poor families and religious or ethnic minorities tend to feel culturally isolated in schools. Unfortunately, donors and governments often ignore such contextual issues. Perry and Habib’s research is exceptional because it was conducted independently and without the influence of the donor-led consultancy industry. Therefore, it successfully identified the nuances of alienation from mainstream education among poor and vulnerable families. It is not right to force the objectives of the global middle class and marketers onto education policy analysis, all in the name of making the education system favorable for the poor and vulnerable by enhancing “school effectiveness,” when in reality, the families and learners of the marginalized segment refuse to accept the schools.
Education policy studies have evolved significantly in a few countries and regions over the last three decades, particularly in academia and by independent scholars or platforms. Instead of solely focusing on ideas such as ‘school effectiveness’, critical frameworks have been used to enrich the understanding of beliefs and practices, which has been referred to as the “first generation of critical policy research”. This has elucidated the role of power and ideology in the policy process. It has broken new ground for critical policy scholars.
This new trend pays attention to the contexts, environment, and complex systems in which policies are drafted, made, validated, endorsed, and enacted. Critically examining educational policy and its impact is becoming a trend in many postcolonial countries.
Policies can sometimes have unintended consequences, interpretations, and implementations at the local level. Therefore, it is crucial to consider all subtleties when analyzing them. The decolonial scholarship suggests a policy setting that respects multiple epistemologies to avoid such consequences. This approach is widely accepted and implemented in a few countries.
There can be no alternative to gaining insights into people’s experiences, perspectives, and cultural backgrounds for formulating a robust education policy. Ethnographic and qualitative research methods can be useful in this regard.. They provide a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter and are helpful in several fields, including education.
Sociology studies the relationship between society and education, uncovers power imbalances, and helps develop democratic understanding. Sociological analyses can inform policy discussions to make them more accessible. Policy-oriented sociology can hold governments accountable for their policy intentions.
However, in non-democratic societies or with limited interaction between citizens and statecraft, the outcome of education can be hindered by various factors, and policy participation alone cannot counteract this trend. To fully comprehend education policies, it is crucial to have a political-economic perspective alongside sociology.
However, there is a significant gap in critical policy analysis of the education sector in Bangladesh. The lack of linking analysis with philosophy, theories, and methodologies with academic rigor or agency realities is evident. This leads to a need for new policy theoreticians and frameworks to make education more relevant and accessible to the poor. Bangladesh can find solutions to its problems by creating opportunities for policy analysis conducted by independent academics, particularly those with backgrounds in political economics, sociology, political anthropology, and education philosophies. Local experts, national scholars, and philosophers should be involved, with meaningful participation from families, teachers, managers, and learners. Sociopolitical analysis is necessary to understand the underlying issues and ensure quality education for all. To tap into employers’ perspectives, Bangladesh’s national corporate and manpower suppliers can be accommodated in policy research endeavors.
To fully understand the impact of education in Bangladesh, it is essential to ensure equal access to knowledge and skills, and school autonomy, which gives schools the freedom to make decisions about their own policies and practices. Additionally, it is necessary to t encourage students to question their identity and develop a more open-minded perspective that can be insightful. It is also crucial to understand the significance of care in teaching, how it can foster a positive learning environment, and the role of curiosity as a natural learning outcome. It must remain free from external influences such as aid-driven and market-led interventions to ensure that policy research and analysis are practical and effective. Instead, the needs of the people should be prioritized, and policy-making should be conducted transparently and equitably. By operating independently from national policy tyrants and international-level policy muscles, a more efficient and effective policy approach that benefits society, the nation, and the state can be established. The dynamics of politics and power must also be considered for analysis. Bangladesh needs both praxis from stakeholders and academically sound policy analyses. Academic exercises can help policymakers and the ‘coalition of agencies’ engage, bargain, and develop the amended ‘policy space’.
