As Dhaka's govt primary schools lose students, teachers hold down the fort
A Tk15,000 crore project aims to reform primary education, but teachers say sustained leadership and resources are crucial to reviving Dhaka’s state-run schools
It was their third day at a new place. More than 600 students from Suritola Model Government Primary School under Kotwali Thana have been shifted to Bangsal Government Primary Boys' School for the next three years. The latter establishment could accommodate no more than 200 students at a time.
"We now receive one-third of our total students," said an assistant teacher of Suritola School. "Some still can't find this place; some fear crossing the road to come here; and some others have already enrolled in new schools."
During our visit, the road in front of Bangsal School was flooded after a heavy downpour. A student from Siddique Bazar fell into the water just steps from the school gate. Embarrassed, she later headed home without attending class.
And at Suritola School, we found the building being demolished as part of the beautification project initiated under the previous regime. The school authorities said there was no need to rebuild a structure that is no more than 30 years old. "The building is completely okay. It just needs a paintjob," said its acting headmistress (name withheld).
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On the road opposite to Bangsal Boys' School sits the 80-year-old FKM Government Primary Girls' School, hidden beneath the basement-like ground floor of a building, completely out of sight. On top, another private school occupies the next three floors.
Operating out of just three classrooms, without any windows or natural light, the school has about 170 students. Yet, no daylight can enter the school and seasonal waterlogging makes regular classes difficult. It barely has any facilities compared to its counterpart on the floors above.
The private school above them filed a lawsuit in 2013, accusing FKM school of operating on illegally occupied land. However, FKM school had been established 43 years before the private school, on land endowed as waqf by a late resident named Fazlul Karim.
FKM's headmistress Sultana Razia has to attend a court hearing at least twice a year. Legal expenses barely come out of the school fund, but from her own pocket, she said.
Can Tk15,000 crore reverse decades of decline?
Dhaka city is home to 342 primary schools, many of which have been in decline for decades, according to primary school teachers.
"Primary schools in Dhaka were running well up until the 2010s. With the rise of private schools in large numbers across the city, policy failures at the administrative level, and corruption in the primary education system, the schools are now suffering," said Md Anisur Rahman, president of the Bangladesh Primary Assistant Teacher's Society. He is also an assistant teacher of Suritola School.
According to the latest Annual Primary School Statistics (APSS) 2024 by the Directorate of Primary Education, there are 13,387 non-government primary schools in Dhaka division.
In July this year, the government announced a Tk15,000 crore mega plan to revive the primary education sector.
The fifth Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP-5) aims to facilitate English language training for all remaining primary teachers (building on the 130,000 teachers trained under PEDP-4).
The plan also includes providing school uniforms to 10.6 million students, supplying digital tablets for 370,000 teachers, midday meals for students, and expanding single-shift schooling.
During the previous government's tenure, the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education undertook a project, the scale of which is as massive as its title: "Establishment and Infrastructure Development and Beautification of Government Primary Schools in Dhaka Metropolitan Area and Purbachal".
Primary schools in Dhaka were running well up until the 2010s. With the rise of private schools in large numbers across the city, policy failures at the administrative level, and corruption in the primary education system, the schools are now suffering.
The project aimed to rebuild and beautify the buildings of 356 government primary schools in Dhaka city (342 existing schools and 14 new schools), allocating Tk1,160 crore.
The project is still ongoing under the new administration. Of the 10 schools that TBS visited, all were found under construction, either having relocated school activities to another nearby school by operating in shifts, or operating at sites under reconstruction.
No permanent head teachers
But no school had a designated head teacher — all acting headmasters or headmistresses. This problem also began during the previous regime.
The shortage of head teachers in government primary schools has been tied up in a long-running legal dispute over the seniority and promotion of teachers.
As a result, the appointment of headteachers in around 32,000 government primary schools across the country was postponed, affecting about 34,000 teachers.
The dispute began when the previous Awami League government nationalised 26,193 non-government primary schools in 2013, bringing thousands of teachers from formerly private schools under the government scheme.
However, questions over seniority and designation of these teachers, particularly in relation to teachers recruited directly into the government primary schools, subsequently became a subject of litigation.
In Kotwali Thana alone, 16 of 32 head teacher posts are vacant, and the vacancies were filled not through due promotion, but through administrative transfer from outside Dhaka.
"Almost 100% of the head teachers were brought in from outside Dhaka. We, who have been serving as assistant teachers for almost three decades, deserve promotion. Otherwise, there is no meaning to be in this profession," said Anisur Rahman.
The promise of quality education
Until 2017, Azimpur Model Government Primary School students used to sit for scholarship exams alongside children from other schools in the area, and had been doing quite well.
"Our results were good enough to challenge any school in our area," Acting Headmistress Halima Khatun recalled. "Then our head teacher left. To this day, there has been no recruitment or promotion. The discipline and command he [former headmaster] established after the pandemic disappeared with his transfer."
There is a well-established myth among people that government schools simply teach worse. Data, however, does not support that notion.
Dhaka division recorded a dropout rate of 10.82% in 2024, the lowest of any division in the country, where 89.38% of children continue school up to Class 5, per APSS 2024. On paper, Dhaka's primary system looks like the country's strongest.
Teachers argue the real gap lies elsewhere.
"There is an assessment process before a government teacher is recruited. Every one of our teachers meets a minimum standard," said the acting headmistress of Suritola School.
"In a private school, there is no guarantee the teacher even passed their own exams. Put any of their kindergarten's toppers against my students in an open exam. You will find that their results are good because they study a narrow, spoon-fed syllabus. We prepare for a question set that covers all 32 schools of an entire thana — the whole syllabus," she added.
At Kamrunnessa Government Girls' School, she added, students write full compositions and paragraphs that no coached kindergarten graduate from a private school could match unaided.
Hasna Hena, acting head teacher of Bhatar Masjid Government Primary School in Azimpur, called the class perception outright prejudice.
"There is a superstition that government school means for poor children, and private school means for rich children," she said. "The funny, almost laughable thing is, they end up spending more money at the place with no quality teachers at all."
What the schools cannot argue with, however, is loss of enrollment.
Suritola's primary section has shrunk from around 1,200 students at its peak to just over 600 today, a fall that Anisur Rahman blames on post-pandemic migration out of the capital.
At Shaheed Buddhijibi Amin Uddin Government Primary School in Katabon, acting head teacher Rina Parveen pointed to a newer problem: the national lottery admission system.
"The children we nurture well end up applying to three, four, five schools through the lottery, and the moment one picks them, my seat goes empty," she said. "Without the lottery, at least it wouldn't happen so indiscriminately."
Yet the counter-proof exists inside the same system. A nearby school, Muktijoddha Government College and School, grew from 70 students to roughly 2,600, because of a competent head teacher, according to Anisur Rahman.
"Where a proper captain is at the helm, you see the difference within two years," he said.
Lack of funds
The rest of the damage is done by money, or rather, its absence.
At Bhatar Masjid school, Hena manages her school's upkeep like a household running short before payday. "When I need 12 bottles of Harpic, and money is tight, I use eight," she said. "A fan breaks down, there's no funds for it — I still have to find Tk3,000 from somewhere."
In the school building, there is an outdated water filter in a dark corner where the washroom is located. Students said they fear going to the washroom as it is too dark, and it is not always clean. One said, "We carry water from our home; the water smells bad. The filter is quite old."
However, when Hena's School Level Improvement Plan (SLIP) grant runs dry before an exam, she negotiates directly with guardians to cover the cost of question papers. "We collect the exam fees from the students. But this cost must come from the government," she said.
That grant is itself uneven and delayed. Hena and Parveen both said their schools received just Tk15,000 this year under SLIP, after roughly 15% is deducted as tax — with this year's allotment yet to arrive at all in Parveen's school.
Suritola, a larger and older school, recalled receiving as much as Tk85,000 in the past; this year it expects "50-something thousand," an amount Anisur Rahman says is scaled to enrollment rather than need.
Staffing tells a similar story. Two sanctioned caretaker posts at Suritola have sat vacant for roughly two decades, with no fresh recruitment. "We keep two people private. A peon and someone who rings the school bell and looks after the grounds," the headmistress said. The school covers their wages through voluntary parent contributions, collecting Tk10,000 to Tk20,000 a month, and charges Tk50 for exam papers.
At Bhatar Masjid and Katabon, teachers said there is no caretaker or guard at all; a theft occurred at Bhatar Masjid school soon after Hena's posting.
Governance has stalled too. School managing committees, once appointed regularly, were dissolved with the change in government and have yet to be reconstituted.
"The paperwork for the new governing board has already been submitted," Hena said. "It gets fixed, then a new problem appears, and we start again."
Without a functioning committee, decisions on everything from repairs to admissions oversight fall back onto acting head teachers who already lack full authority.
Director General of the Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) Shahina Ferdousi said that the upcoming PEDP-5 plan will be inaugurated as soon as the bill is passed in the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC).
Asked about core structural failures and future plans, Shahina referred TBS to Atiqur Rahman, an assistant director general of DPE. He, in turn, referred us to Md Kamrul Hasan, another director of DPE, but he did not respond to calls.
