Bangladesh has achieved a milestone that definitely deservesabsolute praise: we have successfully brought millions of children into the classroom under inclusive educational policy. Walk into any government school, and you will see the triumph of access—packed benches, gender parity, and children from the country’s most under-resourced communities finally getting a seat.
Yet, as a university lecturer who meets these students at the veryend of their academic journey, I am forced to confront a silent, unsettling truth. The state has mastered the art of gettingchildren through the school gate. But we are failing to ensure they leave with real, foundational hard and soft skills.
The connection between our primary schools and our university lecture halls is impossible to ignore: What is missed in earlychildhood returns as a profound emotional and academicstruggle in higher education.
As the government maps out its ambitious 2026 education policy overhaul, the focus must shift from structural metrics to the lived, psychological experience of the students drowning in our classrooms.
In my university courses, I encounter students who are sincere, ambitious, and deeply driven. Yet, when asked to engage in critical writing, independent thinking, or a lively classroom discussion, a wave of anxiety washes over the room. Somestruggle to unpack academic readings or articulate an original argument.
These are not sudden, transient intellectual weaknesses; but arethe deep scars of a system that has spent a decade treating education as an exercise in answer reproduction rather than internalizing and being pragmatic.
The roots of this anxiety trace back to the quiet gaps of their childhood government school classrooms. We have all seen the polite student who sits quietly, copies meticulously from the board, and passes every exam—all while struggling to readfluently or explain a basic concept in their own words. We seethe student who memorizes English passages withoutunderstanding the language texture, stylistics elements or memorizes a math formula without ever knowing what problem it was meant to solve.
Psychological toll
These children are not less capable; they are profoundly underserved. When our system treats automated grade promotion from one class to the next as proof of learning, thegap widens every year. By the time they reach us at the tertiarylevel, they are carrying the immense psychological weight of imposter syndrome—knowing they hold the certificates, but fearing they lack the foundational competence.
Overwhelmed teacher and invisible student
It is easy to blame the students, or even the teachers, but the reality is an institutional design flaw. Government school teachers are trapped in a system that forces them to manage massive classrooms with limited resources and immense pressure to simply "finish the syllabus".
In a room of fifty or sixty students, the path of least resistance isto teach to the middle and move on. The hardest thing for an exhausted educator to notice is the single child who has quietly stopped understanding.
That child, left behind in the middle rows, learns to cope through masking. They learn that memorization is a survival strategy. If you repeat the model answer, the system rewardsyou. But this creates a devastating psychological conditioning: it teaches children to fear questioning, to avoid curiosity, and to view failure not as a learning tool, but as an existential threat.
Centering human element in policy reform
If the 2026 national education roadmap remains a collection ofabstract, high-level directives, it will remain mere paperwork. For reform to matter, it must reach the teacher standing in front of those 50 students, and it must completely realign how we treat a struggling child.
Verdict: Ultimate price of neglect
This is not a detached academic debate. The children sitting ingovernment schools today are the very individuals who will populate our universities, drive our industries, and shape our social mobility tomorrow. If they leave school without basic learning skills, the country pays a staggering price in productivity, employment, and human dignity.
Bangladesh’s first great education victory was getting the children to a seat. Our next victory must be ensuring that the seat is a place of actual learning, curiosity, and psychological safety.
It is time to make a stronger promise to our youth: you are not just an enrollment statistic; you are a mind worth nurturing.
Abir Saha is Lecturer, Daffodil International University (MS,Psychology DU, Practicing psychologist).
