Consider the same Dhaka morning, two months apart: In January 2026, a school bus crawls through a congested Mirpur street, packed with kids. By mid-March, the same bus, almost empty due to early school closures for Eid and fuel conservation.
Yet, the diesel keeps burning in the exact same traffic jam. The “saved” fuel that could have gone to irrigate paddy fields is instead lost into Dhaka's air. The crisis simply moved from the school corridor to the news headlines, with no real savings.
The government is now re-evaluating the approach.
Officials recently confirmed that a hybrid schooling model - combining in-person and online classes - is under active review for metropolitan areas.
A ministry survey found that 55% of students and guardians support a mixed model. Home-based office arrangements for non-essential workers are also on the table.
A cabinet-level decision is expected soon, while the public debate should be guided by careful analysis rather than instinctive reactions.
Dealing with the fuel crisis
As of early April, government fuel stocks stood at 193,000 tons, which is theoretically enough for one month. However, the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation has stated that unless consumption is reduced by 25%, reserves will last only 14 days.
The issue isn’t the size of our national reserve but how we’re spending it. Every hour spent idling in city traffic on school-going or office-commutes burns diesel and octane that our farmers desperately need to keep their pumps running.
In 16 northern and northwestern districts, farmers are paying Tk50 to 80 above the official price for open-market diesel to run irrigation pumps during peak Boro season.
For example, a paddy farmer in Lalmonirhat is rationed to two litres a day against a daily need of 13 for his land while private cars line up at Dhaka filling stations. We are not distributing a crisis evenly. This asymmetry places the burden on those least able to manage it.
Any effective measure to reduce demand must focus on urban vehicle movement, as this is where discretionary consumption occurs.
Switching to a hybrid school model, paired with work-from-home policies for non-essential offices, appears to be the only major move available now to address the crisis substantially.
Turning off lights, fans, or air conditioners might be a step that requires micro-management, but removing millions of daily commutes from the roads is a major one.
This approach is logical, provided the calculations are accurate.
Officials admit they’re still guessing, no hard numbers yet on how much fuel this hybrid model would actually save. That gap may need to be closed while the cabinet signs off.
The Covid experience
Here is where the debate must be handled carefully, because the Covid-19 pandemic offers strong arguments simultaneously “for” and "against" going online.
During the pandemic, online schooling in Bangladesh failed to serve the majority of children. A joint Unicef/BBS study found that only 15.9% of rural children participated in any form of remote learning, compared to 28.7% of urban children.
Another study showed rural students were twice as likely to be excluded from online classes, with 47%citing weak network signals as the primary barrier.
For primary school children, remote learning participation dropped to 13.1% nationwide. The World Bank found that less than half of all school-age students had access to devices for virtual classes.
Education experts are now warning that pandemic-era learning losses have yet to be recovered fully. Another poorly executed transition to online learning could risk turning a temporary energy crisis into a lasting education setback.
The children who fell furthest behind during Covid were mostly from lower-income households. The same families are now concerned about access to devices, reliable internet, and further disruptions to their children’s education.
If anyone proposes taking rural schools online during this energy crisis, the evidence from the pandemic is clear: The infrastructure, devices, and connectivity are lacking. The connectivity is not there. The answer is an unequivocal "no".
However, what changes the analysis is that the government's proposal is not for rural schools. It is explicitly targeted at metropolitan areas.
In Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet, and Rajshahi, device ownership among school-going households is significantly higher, and broadband and mobile data infrastructure is much better than in rural areas.
The Covid experience highlighted a digital divide that is primarily a rural-urban divide. A hybrid model restricted to metropolitan schools sidesteps the severe challenges seen during the pandemic.
Designing the right model
The most logical proposal is a time-limited, urban-only, staggered hybrid model, with work-from-home for non-essential office workers implemented simultaneously.
Alternating online and in-person days across a six-day school week is sensible, but staggering attendance is as important as the hybrid structure itself.
If all Dhaka schools shift online on the same days, fuel savings will be modest. If different zones attend in-person classes on different days, peak traffic is reduced every morning, resulting in greater fuel savings than a uniform schedule could achieve.
At the same time, the work-from-home policy is essential. It determines whether the hybrid school model truly reduces fuel consumption or merely shifts it.
If parents continue commuting to offices while their children are home for online classes, fuel use in private vehicles remains largely unchanged.
If parents and children are home on the same days, the consumption reduction is compounded. The education and labour policy decisions must be coordinated, not announced separately.
Furthermore, implementation of the hybrid model requires the fulfillment of two specific conditions.
First, this must apply only to schools where the government can verify that a reasonable proportion of students have adequate device and connectivity access.
An emerging concern, though seemingly paradoxical, warrants attention: When students study remotely, each household continues to consume electricity on devices, fans, or lights.
The net energy saving must account for increased residential electricity demand, not just reduced commuting fuel.
Rushing a hybrid rollout into schools whose students lack digital access does not save fuel; it simply denies education to the poorest families while the better-equipped ones manage fine.
Second, the arrangement must have a defined end date tied to supply conditions, not to administrative convenience.
Emergency purchases of 260,000 tons of crude and diesel are already underway. As the supply situation improves, the hybrid arrangement should wind down on schedule.
Making the correct decision
Is the hybrid school proposal the right choice? For metropolitan schools, with adequate device access among students, coordinated with urban work-from-home, staggered by city zone, based on verified fuel-saving calculations, and subject to a defined review date, the answer is "yes".
The data supports this, and so does the fuel calculations, once the arithmetic is done. The Covid experience also supports it, as long as the focus remains on urban areas.
The school bus that idled in Dhaka traffic in the morning consumed diesel that a farmer needed to keep his rice crop alive. If a day of online classes and a quieter road can redirect even a fraction of that diesel to where it is most needed, the calculation is straightforward -- it’s a win.
But this requires discipline to do it accurately andfairly -- for exactly as long as the crisis lasts, not a day longer.
Dr Sabbir Ahmad is an engineering and corporate leader with extensive global experience in digital connectivity, energy infrastructure, and sustainable development.