The government has announced a “One Teacher, One Tab” scheme intended to modernise Bangladesh’s education system and ground it more firmly in technology. Under the plan, each tablet will provide teachers with lesson-plan templates, question banks and a facility for uploading evidence of pupil learning. Educators and other stakeholders contend that the initiative’s gravest obstacle will likely be teachers’ lack of the requisite digital skills.
A recent research report from the National Academy for Primary Education (NAPE) reveals that Bangladeshi teachers lag far behind in applying 21st-century skills to digital learning. Although nearly 60 percent of respondents described themselves as proficient, only a quarter actually deploy those skills in the classroom. The NAPE study on exploring the perception of 21st-century skills among government primary school teachers and the challenges of implementation examined more than 13,000 teachers across 16 sub-districts in eight divisions.
This skills deficit extends into secondary-level education. According to UNESCO global education data, Bangladesh ranks last among South Asian nations in the proportion of secondary-level teachers who possess minimum qualifications. The figure stands at only 55 percent.
During the tenure of the interim government, the primary and mass education ministry and the education ministry each established separate advisory committees to improve quality in primary, non-formal and secondary education. Both bodies were chaired by Manzoor Ahmed, emeritus professor at BRAC University. Their reports placed heavy emphasis on proper training as the surest route to a skilled teaching workforce.
Asked for comment, Professor Manzoor Ahmed told Bonik Barta: “We’ve seen many initiatives in the past such as digital classrooms and laptop distributions. But they have left little discernible imprint on educational quality.” The main reason, he said, was a deficit of proper planning. “Schools received digital teaching aids, yet we failed to produce teachers with sufficient skills. In many instances, laptops arrived without adequate training on how to operate them. Elsewhere, the hardware itself was substandard, or schools lacked a reliable electricity supply and internet connectivity.” Such equipment, he added, ultimately languished unused until it decayed.
The educationist cited another structural flaw. “Even where training is delivered, no one verifies whether teachers acquire the intended skills or transfer them into classroom practice. We have a large deficit in monitoring and evaluation.”
Professor Ahmed also noted a shortage of teachers overall. “Securing digital education requires more than just distributing materials. These systemic deficiencies must be rectified.”
This pattern of underuse is already visible across thousands of digital classrooms and laboratories established under various projects of the primary and mass education, education, and ICT ministries. The first phase of the “Sheikh Russel Digital Lab” initiative installed labs in 4,176 institutions. An assessment by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) found the facilities could not be deployed effectively owing to lax supervision, a scarcity of trained teachers, erratic power and internet access, and the absence of a suitable curriculum. Corruption allegations also shadowed the project. An audit of the second phase, which carried a budget of BDT 9.38 billion, uncovered evidence of irregularities involving BDT 7.08 billion in expenditure.
Following the fall of the Awami League government on August 5, 2024, the scheme was renamed the “Digital Lab Establishment in Educational Institutions Project.” Several headmasters report that despite the change of name, no steps have yet been taken to make the labs operational.
An ICT teacher at a school in Saturia upazila of Manikganj district, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Bonik Barta: “When the lab was installed at our school in 2021, five of the seventeen laptops were already defective. Within a year, ten more had failed. Only two now work partially. The webcam in the multimedia classroom is also broken.” The interim government, he noted, had merely renamed the lab. “No steps have been taken to make it functional.”
Experts caution that without improvements to teacher skills, effective training, regular monitoring and infrastructure, the “One Teacher, One Tab” scheme risks producing the same meagre returns as its predecessors. Many teachers also share this view.
Mostafizur Rahman Shahin, general secretary of the Bangladesh Primary Teachers’ Association, told Bonik Barta: “Earlier attempts to establish digital labs in some schools yielded no positive outcome. The reasons were a shortage of trained teachers and substandard equipment. ‘One Teacher, One Tab’ is a good initiative. But first, every teacher must be brought under training, and school infrastructure and internet connectivity must be assured. Otherwise this too may fail.”
The NAPE study examined thirteen 21st-century skills including pedagogy, subject knowledge, digital literacy, critical thinking, creative thinking, problem-solving, self-management, decision-making, communication, life skills and coordination. Analysis of the data shows that 7.2 percent of teachers rated their subject knowledge as outstanding, 14.6 percent as very good and 42.8 percent as good. Yet when actual classroom application was assessed, only 30.1 percent demonstrated sufficient practical skill.
A similar gap appeared in digital literacy: 2.7 percent considered their grasp outstanding, 9.1 percent very good and 23.9 percent good. But in practice, just 19.4 percent applied that knowledge adequately in class. The pattern recurred across other competencies. Roughly half the teachers who believed themselves skilled could not translate that belief into classroom performance.
The “One Teacher, One Tab” initiative for primary-level teachers will be implemented under the fifth Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP-5), according to Abu Noor Md Shamsuzzaman, director general of the primary education directorate.
He told Bonik Barta that roughly 62,000 of the country’s 65,500 government primary schools already host digital classrooms equipped with multimedia projectors, laptops and sound systems. But the training teachers received to operate these tools was rudimentary — a basic orientation rather than a comprehensive course of instruction.
To close this gap, the directorate has introduced a ten-day training programme at its leadership training centres, the director general said. He confirmed that the “One Teacher, One Tab” scheme will proceed under PEDP-5 and expressed hope that work on the project would commence this July. “Before the tabs are distributed, we plan to develop suitable training modules and ensure teachers receive the necessary instruction so they can make full use of the devices,” Shamsuzzaman added.
He also conceded that earlier digital classroom assets had not been properly deployed at the field level and that some instances of misuse had indeed occurred. “The primary cause was a monitoring deficit. Proper oversight will be ensured going forward.” For the tablet rollout, he specified, monitoring will be software-driven, hoping that no scope for past failures will recur.
The government is fully apprised of earlier project shortcomings, said Professor Khan Moinuddin Al Mahmud Sohel, director general (additional charge) of the secondary and higher education directorate. “These considerations will be kept in mind while launching the ‘One Teacher, One Tab’ project,” he told Bonik Barta. “Adequate training for teachers and rigorous monitoring will be instituted to ensure it delivers results.” He noted that teacher upskilling efforts are already underway through the “Learning Acceleration in Secondary Education (LAISE)” project.