Why students must co-create their education

There is a scene in the 2023 award winning Indian film 12th Fail that captures something profoundly wrong with South Asian education systems. In a small school in Chambal, teachers openly facilitate cheating during board examinations, a practice that students expect, parents demand, and the system tolerates entirely. When an honest police officer arrives and stops the practice, the entire batch fails. The protagonist, Manoj Kumar Sharma, admits during his civil service interview that he initially failed because he could not cheat. This moment of honesty becomes his strength.
The film examines India's harsh competitive examination culture, where rote performance matters more than character. Its most uncomfortable truth applies equally to Bangladesh: we have normalised academic dishonesty to such an extent that honesty itself becomes a disadvantage. On this International Day of Education, with its 2026 theme "The power of youth in co-creating education," we must confront an urgent reality. Bangladesh's youth demonstrated in July 2024 that they possess extraordinary capacities for critical thinking, strategic organisation, and collaborative action. They co-created a movement that toppled a government using precisely the skills and passion. If young people can co-create nation-wide transformation, why have we excluded them from co-creating the education system that serves them?
Learning Poverty: Children Attend But Do Not Learn
More than half of Bangladeshi children cannot read with comprehension by age ten, despite attending school regularly. South Asia hosts 100 million learning-poor children, with Bangladesh and India both seeing over 50 per cent of students reading below minimum proficiency, whilst Sri Lanka maintains only 15 per cent learning poverty with comparable resources. We measure success through enrolment rates and GPA-5 inflation whilst ignoring whether children actually learn.
Students progress through grades not because they have mastered content but because the system pushes them forward. Pakistan declared a National Education Emergency in May 2024 with twenty-six million children out of school, but Bangladesh's crisis is arguably more insidious because our children are in school, creating the illusion of progress whilst learning remains absent.
Memorisation Over Understanding
A Pakistani physicist recently argued that their education system teaches subjects including science and mathematics as though they were holy texts, with belief in blind memorisation remaining unshakeable. This criticism also applies directly to Bangladesh. Our curriculum emphasises reproduction over understanding, recitation over analysis. Students memorise entire textbooks without comprehending underlying principles.
Young Bangladeshis have always demonstrated sophisticated critical thinking and strategic planning alongside digital literacy and online mobilisation. They displayed rhetorical skill and persuasive communication whilst maintaining collaborative organisation across social divisions.
UNESCO's 2026 theme recognises that youth under 30 constitute more than half the global population and remain a driving force for sustainable development, innovation, and social transformation. Although, they remain disproportionately affected by poverty, inequality, and limited access to quality education. Young people often remain excluded from decisions that profoundly affect their learning, their futures, and the societies they will lead.
Systemic Dishonesty: The Cheating Epidemic
The scale of academic dishonesty in Bangladesh has reached crisis proportions. In 2017, over 10,000 students were expelled from SSC examinations for cheating. In Bangladesh, 86.8 per cent of students admit to using unethical measures during exams. Examination syndicates now operate as established businesses, charging between 35,000 and 10 lakh taka for their services. Students arrested for Dhaka University entrance exam cheating paid up to 7.5 lakh taka for real-time answers delivered through hidden earpieces.
In some institutions, teachers write answers on blackboards whilst schools compete for pass rates rather than learning outcomes. Mass cheating produces graduates with virtually worthless certificates. Their degrees signify attendance, not competence. When they enter professions, their inadequacy becomes apparent, contributing to job inefficiency across sectors.
Starving Education: The Budget Failure
Numbers reveal priorities. Bangladesh allocates only 1.69 per cent of GDP to education, ranking amongst the lowest globally. UNESCO recommends four to six per cent, whilst Bhutan invests over eight per cent. Between 2018 and 2025, education's share of GDP declined steadily from 2.2 per cent to this historic low. The country spends approximately 27,000 taka per primary student annually, whilst India spends triple that amount and Vietnam quadruples it.
Perhaps more troubling, fifteen to twenty per cent of allocated education budgets remain unutilised annually due to administrative inefficiencies. The majority of actual expenditure covers operational costs, primarily salaries, leaving minimal investment in teacher training, updated materials, or infrastructure improvements. If the next budget allocates at least 4.5 per cent of GDP to education, confidence remains warranted. Anything less repeats previous failures.
Qualified But Incapable: The Teacher Training Gap
No curriculum succeeds without quality teaching. Bangladesh lacks systematic pre-service teacher training infrastructure. Having trained teachers does not equal quality teaching, as the system emphasises certification over actual pedagogical transformation. Research across South Asia shows that students from marginalised backgrounds face lowered expectations from teachers, restricted access to resources, and sometimes humiliating parent-teacher meetings that discourage school attendance. The belief that students from poor or rural backgrounds cannot succeed academically still holds ground amongst significant portions of society.
Irrelevant Curriculum, Invisible Youth Voices
Students repeatedly report finding subjects and examinations irrelevant to their goals. They study not for understanding but for grades that parents demand and schools require. The desperation for better grades drives 68.8 per cent of surveyed students to cheat. Language barriers compound these issues. English being non-native creates enormous difficulties in learning and applying knowledge. Students memorise because they cannot reproduce ideas in their own words. Bangladesh faces identical challenges but rarely discusses them openly.
The examination system itself encourages surface learning. High-stakes national exams make success feel like a matter of survival, leading students to invest time planning cheating strategies rather than working consistently. Competition between schools triggers malpractice as institutions' reputations depend on pass rates.
Co-Creating Solutions: What Must Change
The education ministry must declare this crisis openly and mandate continuous assessment systems at all levels alongside national examinations to lessen the stakes of single exams. Curriculum reform must prioritise critical thinking over memorisation, teaching subjects for understanding rather than reproduction. Science education needs transformation from textbook recitation to experimental inquiry.
Establishing rigorous teacher training programmes with ongoing professional development becomes essential. Salaries need substantial increases to attract talented individuals and retain experienced educators. Examination reform requires fundamental restructuring, with questions testing comprehension and application rather than memorisation. Invigilation must become truly independent, with severe consequences for facilitating cheating.
Schools must reject toxic ranking systems that breed unhealthy competition and implement restorative practices rather than punitive measures when addressing dishonesty. Parents must value learning over marks, curiosity over compliance. Engaging meaningfully with schools and supporting teachers becomes crucial, as does modelling integrity in daily life.
Letting Youth Lead
UNESCO's insistence that education systems are strongest when shaped with those they serve carries profound implications for Bangladesh. Meaningful youth engagement demands more than consultation, requiring formal mechanisms, transparent representation, adequate resources, and youth involvement from design through monitoring. If we truly believe in the power of youth in co-creating education, we must give them actual seats at decision-making tables, not ceremonial positions without authority.
Pakistan's education emergency, Africa's transformation agenda, and India's ongoing debates about examination reform show we are not alone. But we are running out of time. The demographic dividend depends entirely on educating our youth effectively. An unemployable graduate population represents disaster, not development. This Education Day of 2026 demands more than ceremonial speeches. It requires confronting uncomfortable truths about systematic failure, inadequate investment, normalised dishonesty, and misplaced priorities. The students of Bangladesh showed us what is possible when youth act as co-creators of change. Now we must build an education system worthy of their potential and their participation.

rummank@gmail.com