The government has made a credible start in delivering its electoral commitments on primary education, but sustaining momentum through to full implementation remains the real challenge, a study by the Citizens Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh revealed on Saturday.
The findings were presented at a dialogue titled "Is the Government Delivering? Spotlight on Primary Education," organised by the Citizen's Platform for SDGs, at a city hotel in Gulshan.
Towfiqul Islam Khan, Additional Director (Research) at the Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD), presented the keynote paper. Dr Debapriya Bhattacharya, Convener of the Citizen's Platform for SDGs, Bangladesh, chaired the session, while State Minister for Primary and Mass Education Bobby Hajjaj attended as the chief guest.
The study tracked 24 election manifesto pledges relevant to primary education, three focused specifically on primary and pre-primary education and 21 classified as cross-cutting, affecting both primary and higher levels, using a five-stage framework ranging from "Reform Proposed" to "Action Implementation."
None of the pledges have yet reached the final "Action Implementation" stage, the study found. Of the three primary-specific pledges, one each sits at "Reform Initiated," "Legal & Policy Framework" and "Operationalisation." Among the 21 cross-cutting pledges, eight have moved to "Operationalisation," including the mid-day meal programme, free school uniform distribution, teachers' retirement benefits, the "One Child, One Tree" campaign, and multimedia classrooms.
The researchers noted that quick-win, symbolic initiatives have advanced fastest, while several structural reforms, such as establishing an Education Reform Commission, ensuring health protection for female students, and launching a dedicated education TV channel, remain stalled at the proposal stage.
On financing, the study said the education budget for FY2026-27 stands at 1.8 percent of GDP, still 0.4 to 0.5 percentage points short of the pathway needed to reach the Citizens Platform's proposed target of 5 percent of GDP by 2031. Budget utilisation has also lagged, with actual education spending at only around 1.3 percent of GDP in FY25 and overall utilisation falling to about 76 percent between FY23 and FY25.
The study flagged the delayed rollout of the fifth Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP5), to which 16 of the tracked pledges are linked as a critical bottleneck, warning that further delay could compress its 2026-2031 implementation window and slow progress on foundational literacy, teacher quality, and school-level infrastructure.
The study recommended immediate clarification on the reasons behind PEDP5's delay, closer scrutiny of whether rising budget utilisation reflects genuine investment in learning quality rather than salary costs, ring-fencing of education allocations amid tight fiscal space, publication of citizen-friendly quarterly budget reports, and fixes to long-standing procurement and project-implementation bottlenecks.