Bangladesh leaves education budget almost unchanged, again, after pandemic setback

The allocation for the education sector has remained almost unchanged for another year in proportion to the total size of the budget, despite the setbacks faced by the sector due to the coronavirus pandemic and calls by the education minister for increased spending.

The government has raised the allocation for the sector in the national budget by 13.20 percent to Tk 814.49 billion even though Education Minister Dipu Moni has been asking for twice as much the current funding.

Schools and universities were shut for more than two years as part of efforts to keep coronavirus infections under control. The education sector continues to reel from the effects of the pandemic as families are hit by rising living costs amid the Russia-Ukraine war.

The disruption led to calls for greater attention to the education sector in the long term but the proposed allocation for the education sector has increased by only 0.10 percentage points in proportion to the size of the Tk 6.78 trillion budget unveiled on Thursday.

The combined allocation for education and technology even fell to 14.7 percent of the total budget from 15.7 percent last year.

Speaking at an event in Dhaka’s St Joseph School just before Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal presented the budget in parliament, Dipu Moni said the current allocation for the education sector is higher than the total budget in 2006, but it has remained around 3 percent of the GDP.

She called for more investment in the sector by raising the allocation to 6 percent of GDP as per international standards.

“I believe education is the most important thing we need in future, just like we need big development projects now to take the country forward. That will [have to] be our mega project.”

Although the allocation remains almost unchanged, Kamal said in his budget speech that the government will pay “special” attention to increasing the spending capacity of the sector and monitor the quality of spending.

As part of the digitalisation of education, the government will further expand the online education that was started during the pandemic, he said.

To ensure close monitoring of the student’s study progress, teachers have continued their regular teaching activities through mobile phones and personal communication with the students, according to him.

To take advantage of the country's demographic dividend, the government emphasises quality technical and vocational education, Kamal said.

The enrolment rate in technical education, which was less than 1 percent 12 years ago, is now 17.25 percent, the finance minister claimed.