Lottery or admission test? Both are failing our children

Each year, the school admission season in Bangladesh raises a familiar mix of hope, panic and resentment. Parents chase seats in a small number of reputed schools. Children become the centre of a contest long before they understand it.

At the same time, the policy response has largely centred on shifting between two methods of distribution — lottery and admission tests — while the wider question of school quality remains unaddressed.

The debate is often framed as chance versus merit, but in reality it is also about stress versus relief, and access versus advantage. In Bangladesh, however, the real issue appears to be much deeper. It is about what kind of fairness is possible in an unequal education system.

The roots of the current debate go back well before the Covid-19 pandemic. Until 2010, admission tests were common in sought-after schools, especially in cities. That system drew heavy criticism for putting very young children under intense pressure and for creating space for irregularities, influence and an aggressive coaching culture.

In response, the Awami League government introduced lottery-based admission for Class 1 in public secondary schools from the 2011 academic year. Contemporary reporting at the time showed the government arguing that pre-school-age children should not face psychological torment simply to enter school. Later commentary and reporting also noted that the shift was intended to curb corruption, favouritism and the admission business surrounding reputed schools.

Still, for most classes, admission tests remained part of the system for years. A 2021 report from The Daily Star, while discussing wider reform, noted that before the full lottery era, Class I admissions were already conducted through lottery nationwide, Class IX admissions were linked to Junior School Certificate or Junior Dakhil Certificate results, while students seeking admission to other classes generally had to sit for admission tests. 

Bangladesh was therefore already operating a mixed system before the pandemic changed everything.

The major turning point came in early to mid-2020. As Covid-19 infections surged, the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education recommended admission by lottery for Classes I through X if the public health situation worsened.

On 9 December 2020, the government announced that high school admissions in Dhaka would begin on 15 December and would be conducted through lottery from Class I to Class IX. The move was clearly pandemic-driven. It was intended to avoid mass examinations during a public health emergency. But a temporary solution soon hardened into policy.

From the 2021 academic year onwards, the lottery system was expanded across classes and, over time, across both government and private secondary schools. The Business Standard reported in March 2026 that the Covid-era expansion covered all grades from 2021 and remained in force.

The Daily Star reported on 16 March 2026 that students were still being admitted to Classes I to IX in government and private secondary schools through lottery, and that even the policies issued on 13 and 19 November 2025 had preserved that structure before they were abruptly cancelled.

The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education's own notice dated 28 October 2024 also shows that lottery-based admission for the 2025 academic year remained official policy. Dhaka Tribune reported in December 2024 that admissions from Classes 1 to 9 would once again be conducted through digital lottery.

That continuity matters because the lottery was no longer just a Covid workaround. It had become a statement about how the state sought to handle scarcity. When there are far fewer seats than applicants, the lottery distributes access without pretending that all applicants have had the same chance to prepare. In that sense, the lottery is not anti-merit so much as a recognition that merit is already shaped by unequal conditions.

This is where the Bangladesh context becomes crucial. Admission tests may look fair on paper, but the ability to prepare for them is not evenly distributed. UNESCO has noted that families in Bangladesh shoulder an unusually high share of education costs. 

The UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report found that Bangladeshi households cover 71% of education expenditure — the highest share in South Asia — and that around 7% of families have to borrow to send children to school. 

UNESCO has also pointed to the way richer households are better able to pay for private tuition. The broader message is that even before an admission test begins, economic inequality has already entered the room.

World Bank research on Bangladesh supports this broader pattern. Its review of education outcomes and spending found that household expenditure plays a major role in educational attainment and that disparities persist across wealth and geography.

Separate research using Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics household data found that the likelihood of purchasing private tutoring has risen over time, and that there are significant rural–urban disparities in participation and spending. 

In other words, a child in Dhaka with access to tutors, coaching and educated parental support is not entering the same race as a child from a poorer or rural household.

That is why criticism of admission tests in Bangladesh goes beyond perception. It reflects how the system actually works. Tests do not simply reward talent; they often reward purchased preparation.

In South Asia, India offers perhaps the closest comparison to Bangladesh, but its system is far more layered. In many states, most children enter government schools without competitive entrance exams, often through neighbourhood or catchment-based access. 

However, competition returns sharply in urban private schooling and in oversubscribed categories, especially in cities where demand for reputed schools is high.

In places such as Delhi, nursery admissions in many private schools use point-based criteria that give weight to neighbourhood distance, sibling status and alumni links. At the same time, quotas for Economically Weaker Sections and disadvantaged groups are filled through a computerised lottery when applications exceed available seats. 

Across India, the 25% quota under the Right to Education Act also relies on a lottery in many states. This means India does not rely solely on merit-based testing; it combines neighbourhood rules, quotas and random selection to manage access.

Elsewhere in South Asia, the same tension appears in different forms. In Pakistan, elite private schools often depend on admission tests, interviews and fee barriers, while government schools largely follow open access, creating a system divided by class. 

In Sri Lanka, school admissions — especially at entry level — are shaped by residence, distance-based criteria and quotas, with frequent debates over fairness and influence rather than formal exams alone.

In many developed countries, the trend has been to reduce early high-stakes selection. In the United Kingdom, most students enter state schools through catchment areas, although selective grammar schools still use entrance exams. 

The United States relies largely on neighbourhood zoning, with lotteries used in oversubscribed charter schools and selective testing limited to a small number of elite institutions.

Countries such as Finland have gone further by focusing on equal school quality and delaying competition until later stages. The broader lesson is clear: where school quality is more even, the need for early admission filters becomes much weaker.

In Bangladesh, the debate has once again returned to the policy level. That is why the decision to scrap the lottery system in March 2026 triggered concern so quickly. The government announced that, from the 2027 academic year, the lottery system for admissions from Class 1 to Class 9 in both public and private schools would be withdrawn and a new system based on admission tests would be introduced.

Education Minister ANM Ehsanul Hoque Milon said the lottery does not allow proper evaluation of merit. However, there are also concerns among educationists that this could revive the old admission rat race, expand coaching and bring back the very distortions the lottery system had once sought to reduce.

"Introducing admission tests at the primary level will inevitably increase pressure on children and revive the coaching culture," Manzoor Ahmed, Professor Emeritus at BRAC University, told TBS. "Once exams are brought back, coaching will expand, whether openly or underground. It also raises long-standing concerns about inequality, because not all families can afford coaching, creating an uneven playing field from the very beginning.

"At the moment, there is no perfect solution, but many educationists see the lottery as the least bad option," he added. "Instead of scrapping it, the system could be improved through better transparency and management, and by giving greater priority to local students. In the long run, the real solution lies in ensuring quality education in all schools so that parents do not feel forced to compete for a small number of institutions."

There is another important dimension here. The lottery system itself never solved the deeper crisis; it merely changed how scarcity was managed. It did not reduce the obsession with a handful of elite schools. It did not address uneven teaching quality, overcrowded classrooms, weak neighbourhood schools or the public distrust that drives parents towards a few perceived brands of schooling.

Even the 2025 lottery figures reveal the scale of the imbalance. In December 2025, at least 719,858 students applied for 121,596 seats in government schools, while 107,521 were selected and 14,075 seats remained vacant.

At the same time, private schools had more than 800,000 vacant seats. That contrast is telling. The problem is not only the admission mechanism; it is the vast inequality in perceived quality between institutions. Parents are not simply competing for schooling — they are competing for a narrow category of schools they believe can change a child's life.

So which system is more acceptable in Bangladesh? If the answer is based on social fairness, the lottery remains easier to defend than admission tests. It reduces early pressure on children and limits the direct advantages of money, tutoring and coaching.

However, if the answer is based on the cultural idea of merit that dominates Bangladesh, admission tests will always retain emotional support, especially among middle-class parents who want effort to be rewarded. That is why the debate remains unresolved. Bangladesh wants merit, but without equal preparation. It wants fairness, but within a deeply unequal system.

Bangladesh continues to debate how to distribute a small number of good school seats while avoiding the harder question of why quality schooling remains so scarce. Until that changes, neither the lottery nor the admission test will appear entirely fair. One obscures inequality behind chance; the other legitimises it through competition.