"Bangladesh is the basket case of the world." These were the words of the former United State's Secretary of the State Dr. Henry Kissenger in 1972 to describe one of the poorest countries of the world. Battered by relentless cycles of floods, droughts, cyclones, famines and other natural disasters, the world's most crowded nation remains till today well below the line of poverty and consequently, its people remain largely illiterate. "Education is an important form of human capital that is essential for improving productivity and furthering economic growth." As such, the World Bank, a specialized agency of the United Nations, is widely encouraging investments in education, through loans, in under-developed countries (also referred as developing-countries).
Bangladesh, in the recent past, has received substantial amount of loans from the World Bank for promoting educational investments. Government and Non-Government Organizations (NGO's) are playing an active role in the development process of educating the population of Bangladesh particularly the children and women.
According to Richard D'Aeth, author of the book Education and Development in the Third World, there are three extremes in the educational systems of different developing countries. They are: 1) Countries with a very small educational base, so small as to make development difficult. This is exemplified by the large, sparsely populated countries of Middle Africa such as Mali, Niger and Chad where shortage of educated and trained people constitutes the barrier to development. 2) Countries with a wide educational and cultural base. The main limiting factor is not lack of education, but the social structure. This situation is characterized by Latin American countries like Chile and Cuba where education is refrained by social and political obstacles. 3) Countries with a surfeit of educated people in a population too large for the land and other resources. Bangladesh, along with India and other South Asian countries fall under this category.
In recent years, Bangladesh has adopted various strategies to educate the general population and mainly the children. However, there are still many challenges to overcome for Bangladesh to attain an acceptable standard of education and literacy. This paper is designed to present the current situation of Bangladesh in terms of education and educational growths as well as the systems and strategies adopted to reach Bangladesh's objectives.