During the monsoon period, going to school was never just a simple walk for Asadul.
The books in his schoolbag often became wet. The muddy path between home and school turned slippery and treacherous. A deep canal stood between his home and the classroom, and when rain came, it swelled into a strong current.
Sometimes he waded through waist-deep water. On other days, he crossed on a raft made of banana trees.
Yet he kept going.
For a boy growing up in the remote char village of Nowshala in Kurigram's Chilmari upazila, school represented something much greater than a classroom. It was a pathway to a different life.
From an early age, Asadul dreamed of becoming a doctor -- a dream that appeared almost impossible in a place where even reaching school became a daily struggle.
Today, that boy is a student at Rangpur Medical College.
His journey is extraordinary, and it also speaks to a much larger reality in Bangladesh.
Over the past decades, the country has made significant progress in bringing children into school. About 97% of primary school-aged children were enrolled in school, while the dropout rate declined significantly from 40% in 2010 to 13% in 2023.
But, for those living in remote and climate-vulnerable areas, the harder challenge is often staying in school, completing secondary education, and finding a pathway to higher education.
Bangladesh has made steady progress in expanding access to education, but significant gaps remain in remote char areas.
The Bangladesh Education Sector Analysis 2026 highlights persistent “last mile” challenges, high dropout rates, and continuing disparities affecting children from low-income households, remote and vulnerable areas, and other marginalized groups.
Asadul's life offers a human face to those statistics.
When he was growing up, there was no school in the vicinity of Nowshala, surrounded by the Brahmaputra River. For the communities, education remained beyond reach.
That began to change in 2006, when Friendship established a primary school in the area. Asadul enrolled in 2008.
He was still young, but he had already seen the harshness of char life.
River erosion repeatedly threatened his family's home and land. Poverty was a constant reality.
Yet while the river could take away land and possessions, it could not take away his determination to study.
"During floods, I sometimes crossed the canal on a banana raft. Often my books and notebooks got wet," Asadul recalls. "But I always felt that if I stopped going to school, my dream would disappear too."
It is difficult to imagine what those words meant to a child who had to negotiate floodwater simply to attend class. But for Asadul, education had already become inseparable from his hope for a better future.
After six years of struggle, he completed primary education. Yet the next stage proved even more difficult.
There was still no nearby secondary education opportunity. To continue studying, Asadul had to leave home and depend on others.
He stayed in different households, taught their children, and did household work in exchange for food and accommodation. He also worked in hotels, agricultural farms, and crop-processing centers.
His education was sustained not by comfort, but by sacrifice.
"To continue my studies, I had to move from one house to another. In return, I taught their children and did different kinds of work, he says."
The arrangement was not always kind.
"Sometimes families demanded money for food and accommodation, which I could not afford. I had to leave those places and start again elsewhere. There were days when I worked in other people's homes just to arrange one meal."
Still, he refused to abandon his education.
"I always carried a dream -- to become educated, change my destiny, and bring happiness to my family and society."
His daily routine was grueling: Classes during the day, work in the afternoon and evening, and study late into the night.
Eventually, he completed both secondary and higher secondary education.
Then came the medical admission test.
For Asadul, becoming a doctor had never been simply about choosing a profession. It had become a personal promise -- to himself and to the family whose hardships he had witnessed since childhood.
Guidance and encouragement from mentors helped him gain confidence about higher education and career choices. He began studying 14 to 15 hours a day.
But his first attempt at the medical admission test ended in regret. He missed the opportunity by just two marks.
For many students, such a narrow margin of failure could have ended the dream. For Asadul, it became another reason to try.
The following year, the result he had waited for finally arrived.
In the 2022–23 academic session, Asadul secured admission to Rangpur Medical College.
The distance he had travelled was not merely geographical. It was a journey from a place where a child once had to cross floodwater to reach a primary classroom to a point where that same child could enter one of the country's prominent medical colleges.
"Every night before going to sleep, I feel that I am finally becoming a doctor," he says. "In the future, I want to serve disadvantaged people as a compassionate physician."
His words carry a significance beyond personal achievement.
Bangladesh's education story is often told through enrollment figures and examination results. But behind those numbers are children whose educational journeys are shaped by where they are born, whether their families can afford to keep them in school, whether a road remains passable during the rainy season, and whether they can see a future beyond the next examination.
The challenge is particularly acute in climate-vulnerable communities.
Unicef says children living in disaster-affected parts of Bangladesh are among those most at risk of exclusion from school.
In 2024 alone, climate-related events disrupted the education of 35 million children in Bangladesh, with heatwaves, cyclones, and floods causing repeated school closures and, in some areas, children losing up to eight weeks of learning.
For children in the chars, education must mean more than opening the door of a school. It must mean creating a continuous pathway -- from primary education to secondary school, from secondary school to higher education, and eventually from education to dignified work and meaningful participation in society.
The support of educational initiatives and career guidance can help students from remote communities see possibilities that may otherwise remain invisible.
Asadul’s story is ultimately about what a young person can do when opportunity meets determination. Yet stories like his suggest that something else is changing in Bangladesh’s chars.
As access to education expands, children are beginning to imagine futures as doctors, engineers, teachers, and other professionals.
It reminds us that talent does not belong only to cities, nor does ambition stop at the edge of a river.
This is the larger promise of education in Bangladesh: Not simply getting children into classrooms, but enabling them to stay, learn, progress, and aspire.
Building a better Bangladesh therefore requires more than expanding access. It requires resilient schools and learning opportunities in vulnerable communities, stronger support for children at risk of dropping out, quality learning, pathways from primary to secondary education, career guidance, and opportunities to continue into higher education.
The boy who once crossed floodwaters on a banana raft is now on his way to becoming a doctor.
His story is not only about how far one child has travelled. It is about how far Bangladesh can take its children if education reaches the last mile and the pathway does not end there.
Sometimes, building a better future begins with simply helping a child reach school. The real transformation comes when that child is given the opportunity to keep going.
Ruhul Kuddus is the General Manager of the Education Sector, Friendship.
