Rethinking Education in 2050 The next Bangladesh will be built in our classrooms

There is a child somewhere in Bangladesh entering a classroom for the first time. Perhaps it is a school beside a river in Cumilla, a crowded classroom in Dhaka, or a school in a coastal community of Cox`s Bazar where families live with the burdens of climate change and uncertainty. They carry school bags, books and dreams. Those dreams will be realised by the student and by parents who can't comprehend them either. In other areas, a student spends many hours of the day studying for an exam. That student is organised around the books, the notes, model answers, and grades. That student learned that to be successful one has to provide the answer desired at the time it is expected. Whereas in a city, a university student is applying for their first full-time job. Yet, facing an employer, he encounters a more unsettling question: What can I actually do with everything I have learned? These three young Bangladeshis may never meet, but together they represent one of the most important questions facing our country: what is education ultimately for?

Each generation prepares young minds for a future it will never fully witness. Perhaps this is the greatest act of faith of humanity. A child learning to read today may one day saves lives, build industries or shapes government policies. The 2050 is not too far. It is quietly taking shape in the classroom across the country today. Yet our children will lead a world shaped by Artificial Intelligence, Climate change, demographic shifts, any many challenges we cannot yet foresee. Bangladesh has progressed far distances since independence. Through various challenges, it has been able to rank amongst other nations in terms of economic growth, industry, and social metrics. Education has played a role in large-scale social and economic change in the country. The successive governments of Bangladesh were able to fulfill many progressive goals of providing access to primary education, strengthening female enrollment, introducing tertiary education, all of which made significant social and economic changes to the country.

Yet access to school should not be confused with learning. The World Bank's 2024 Bangladesh Learning Poverty Brief reports that only about 2% of primary-school-age children were out of school in the data used, while 51% of children at late-primary age were experiencing learning poverty and 50% of Grade 5 students had not achieved minimum reading proficiency. More recent evidence reinforces this concern. The 2025 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) found that among Bangladeshi children aged 7–14, only 50.2% demonstrated foundational reading skills and 39.2% foundational numeracy skills. The contrast is striking Bangladesh has made considerable progress in bringing children into classrooms, but access to education does not automatically translate into learning. Our national problem can no longer be the number of children who enter schools. We must think about what happens to children when they step into a classroom. With the invention of AI, essays, translations, answers to complicated questions, and computer programming can all be automated in a matter of seconds. In the world of automation where information can be accessed by machines, having knowledge can no longer be the ultimate goal of education. The most valuable characteristic of humanity today is being able to determine the significance of the information the machine provides along with knowing how to interpret it and what course of action to take. Knowledge still matters. Real learning matters more. Critical thinking about something requires prior knowledge of that something. For the national progress, knowledge must be the bare minimum and it must be replaced with a thirst for curious learning.

One of the biggest obstacles in the path of progress is the confusion between education and learning. The former can be forced upon someone while the latter must come from a genuine interest in learning. Someone can go through the entire schooling system of attending classes and can even excel in exams but can still be unable to answer a question that is not on the exam. Examinations and knowledge remain essential to education. The concern is what an assessment system ultimately rewards. When success depends heavily on producing predictable answers, teaching and learning can become organised around model answers, coaching and examination performance rather than questioning, experimentation and application. Therefore, institutional knowledge cannot be created by issuing degrees by the thousands. It must be understood that curiosity is the beginning of true scientific and entrepreneurial thought.

This is why teachers have a central role in education. We value creativity in the students we produce and design the roles of the teachers accordingly. Teachers are expected to guide students' passion, but we continue to evaluate their work through the results of an examination. Excellent education cannot be built in any country where teaching is not considered to be an important and challenging profession. For teachers to become mentors and learning designers, they need appropriate professional development, greater support in using technology, and an assessment system that rewards understanding, questioning and application. AI may increasingly assist with explanations and access to information, but the distinctly human functions of teaching recognising potential, motivating learners, encouraging curiosity and providing judgement become more important. While the future of education may be more digitised, its foundation will always be human.

The way we define the success of the educational system must be re-evaluated. A successful educational system must meet the needs of the labour market. The transition from education to employment reveals another important gap. World Bank research on graduates of affiliated colleges in Bangladesh found that only 20% of employed graduates were working in jobs related to their field of study, while just 23% considered the knowledge and skills acquired at college useful in their work. Employers, meanwhile, increasingly value capabilities such as problem-solving, independent thinking and workplace skills alongside academic knowledge. This suggests that the challenge is not simply producing more graduates but ensuring that years of education develop capabilities that young people can transfer to real problems and changing workplaces. Skilled work needs to be appreciated in our education system. Rather than seeking which certificate will look good on their resume, we need to ask, “what will they excel in?”. There is an added sense of urgency with the introduction of technology.  Technology can expand educational opportunity, but access alone does not guarantee digital capability. The 2025 MICS report found that 72.1% of households had internet access at home, yet only 37.6% of women aged 15–24 demonstrated at least one ICT skill. This distinction is increasingly important in the age of AI. The emerging digital divide in Bangladesh may therefore be not only between those who have access to technology and those who do not, but also between those who can use technology critically, creatively and responsibly. Building a nation of digitally literate, informed, and sceptical citizens is of paramount importance in this age of unlimited information.

Our universities should challenge themselves to reflect deeper on their goals. A university is not just the last step before securing a job. It is one of most important centers of interrogation. How can our infrastructure grow to accommodate more liveable cities? What techniques can we implement in agriculture to make it more efficient and sustainable? How should Bangladesh adjust to climate change? How should businesses grow to become more competitive internationally? How can we create a framework to govern AI safely? How can healthcare and other services improve? How corruption can be reduced? Countries aiming to be knowledge economies cannot sustain permanently importing the knowledge needed to address their most significant issues. When nations celebrate their progress, they showcase their bridges, highways, power stations, and airports. These are all symbolic of the progress that a nation has made. However, Education adds a different kind of social infrastructure, which is intangible. It is located in human beings.

The first great chapter of educational journey of Bangladesh was about providing access to millions of people to education. The next must be about what happens to them once they enter the education. We must remember that our imagination will not be constructed with concrete, steel or technology first, it will be constructed in the imagination of a child. That child in is probably in class now. Will we develop that child’s capacity to wonder and have the bravery to ask the questions that the world has yet to dream of? Or will we just teach them to memorise the answers to our questions? I ask these questions to our current Government, Policy makers, parents and the members of the civil society. Because tomorrow will be determined not by how many answers our children can memorise today, but by how courageously we teach them to ask the questions that will shape the future.