The Missing Teacher: The education crisis in Bangladesh is also a human capital crisis
No doubt, Bangladesh has achieved a historic milestone: bringing the overwhelming majority of its children into school. Access has expanded, but access without effective teaching does not necessarily produce learning. In the 21st century, defined by technological advancement, globalisation, and AI (Artificial Intelligence), access is no longer the primary concern. The more important issue is what happens after students enter the classrooms. If teaching staff are missing, insufficiently prepared, lack adequate support, and employed inappropriately, or lose interest in their profession, schooling can expand without improving learning. Teacher shortages and weaknesses in teaching quality professional support therefore represent more than an education-sector problem. They threaten the accumulation of human capital on which future productivity, technological adaptation and economic growth of the country will depend.
The education story of the nation contains two apparently contradictory realities. The first is a remarkable expansion of access. Bangladesh has undoubtedly made great progress in increasing school enrolment. At the same time, gender parity has improved substantially. The data from 2024 show the enrolment rate was 106.4 per cent, up from 103.12 per cent in 2023. Based on the data from 126 countries suggest that the world average is 100.88 per cent. Historically, the average enrolment from 1970 to 2024 was 79.54 per cent. Now, primary enrolment is close to 100 per cent. In 2025, Bangladesh experienced a notable decline, dropping by about 7 per cent compared to 2024. But these figures tell us far more about access to schooling than about the quality of learning inside schools. World Bank records suggest that active primary school enrolment is roughly 16.68 million. According to the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, primary school completion is 83.75 per cent, and the estimated pupil-teacher ratio is around 42:1 in 2026, while in China it is 16, in the USA 13, and in Greece 9.
The second reality is far more troubling: being in school does not necessarily mean learning. The Learning Poverty Brief 2024 by the World Bank estimates that only 49 per cent of primary school students will meet the reading standard at the end of the primary level. This reveals the central paradox of education achievement in Bangladesh: schooling has expanded much faster than learning. The policy question therefore needs to shift from how many children enter school to what educational value they receive once they are there. The country has made considerable progress in addressing the 'missing student 'but difficult challenge is the 'missing learning'. At the centre of that challenge stands what this article calls the 'missing teacher '. The expression "missing teacher" means much more than a teacher who is absent from the classroom. It is the teacher who was never hired, the teacher who was trained but posted to a school where the training was of no use, the teacher who is unsupported, and the teacher who is working in a system and a career that are of no value. In this sense, Bangladesh does not suffer from a teacher problem. It suffers from a teacher-system problem, which is, in fact, a human capital problem.
The scale of the "missing teacher" problem is substantial. In June 2025, the Non-Government Teachers' Registration and Certification Authority (NTRCA) in Bangladesh stated 100,822 teacher vacancies in MPO-listed non-government schools across the country. Of the total teacher vacancies, 46,211 were in schools and colleges, 53,501 in madrassas, and 1,110 in technical and business-management institutions. However, the recruitment process revealed a more serious problem. Around 41,600 candidates were recommended, thereby leaving approximately 58,000 to 59,000 vacancies unfulfilled. This was attributed to the lack of sufficient eligible candidates. The problem also exists in government primary education. The government published vacancies for 10,219 assistant teachers across 6 divisions in November 2025. As of July 2026, the education minister said the government was preparing to recruit 32,500 government primary headteachers and about 70,000 teachers and lecturers in MPO institutions. It was also reported that NTRCA was preparing to fill almost 78,000 vacant MPO posts. Despite these efforts, the problem persists. The teacher problem for Bangladesh cannot be explained as a lack of authorised posts. Rather, it is a problem of creating and allocating teachers when needed. Hence, the policy concern shifts from how many teachers Bangladesh has, to whether Bangladesh has the right teachers allocated to the right schools and teaching the right subjects. The problem is not simply the number of teachers, but the absence of a sufficiently integrated system for recruiting, training, deploying, supporting and retaining them.
The heavy reliance on private tutoring is also a major concern for Bangladesh. Private tutoring accounted for about 26% of total household spending on education and about 31% of total spending on secondary education, according to World Bank data. During the pandemic, 64% of households hired private tutors, with 59% of households in the lower socioeconomic status hiring private tutors. Tutoring can provide valuable supplemental support, but using private tutoring to supplement core education creates serious equity issues. In this way, weaknesses in the formal teaching system are partly transferred from the state to households, with poorer families least able to purchase the additional instructional support needed to compensate. Another important issue is low public investment. However, the current BNP-led government promised to increase the education budget by approximately 2 per cent of GDP. This represents a remarkable increase from the previous year, when education expenditure was TK 87,206 crore, or 1.39% of GDP. However, UNICEF insisted that the government should strive toward the 3% GDP goal while focusing on learning, teaching, and school resilience. It is imperative to understand that spending on teachers is spending on productive infrastructure.
Education reform is especially relevant as the economic model is changing. Previously, factors such as low-cost labour, remittances, manufacturing, and high rates of urbanisation contributed to positive economic growth, but it is unsustainable to compete on low-cost labour while aiming for higher living standards. Now, Bangladesh will need to compete on quality and productive labour. Future workers will need higher literacy and numeracy, as well as skills like effective communication and critical thinking. Adaptability and technological savviness will be especially important. Weakness in any of these skills will negatively affect the other skills. A skills deficiency will eventually become a productivity deficiency. The economic significance of the teacher crisis therefore lies in human-capital accumulation. Today's classroom determines, in part, the productivity characteristics of tomorrow's labour force.
Bangladesh must move beyond counting recruited teachers. The answer lies in knowing where vacancies exist, which subjects lack staff, how long positions remain vacant, whether professional development improves practice, and whether students learn more. Document vacancies for each school and district and for each subject, along with long-term workforce projections, more intensive teacher training and certification, induction and mentoring for new teachers, and vacancy incentives to retain staff in more challenging locations. It is imperative that investments in technology follow a teacher-first approach, and that education spending increases be coupled with stronger accountability for learning. Without reform of this nature, lack of funding could well be the determining factor. However, without funding, even with reform, inaction could easily be the determining factor.
Human capital development means the results of any policy change may take decades to become apparent. A student currently in learning poverty will enter the labour market when Bangladesh intends to compete in the global economy through enhanced technology and productivity. Current teacher vacancies are future skill gaps. Poor literacy today translates into future training costs, and inequities in learning today translate into future economic inequities. Bangladesh therefore requires more than "more teachers". It requires the right teachers, with the right capabilities and in the right subjects, staffed in the right schools with suitable incentives, professional development, and technology. The next economic transformation will not be defined only by the addition of factories, ports, technology parks, or ministries, it will be defined every day in the thousands of classrooms across the country. A missing teacher therefore represents much more than an empty position in a school. It represents learning that may never occur, skills that may never develop and productive potential that Bangladesh may never fully realise. The next economic transformation of the nation will be built in classrooms. Investing in capable teachers is therefore not simply education spending. It is investment in future productive capacity.