Op-ed by Nazia Rahman

When does extra academic support stop being a choice and become a necessity? In Bangladesh, this question is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. For millions of students, attending school is no longer considered sufficient preparation for academic success. Private tutors, coaching centres, commercial guidebooks and model-test programmes have become an almost expected part of the educational journey.

This parallel system, commonly known as shadow education, operates alongside formal schooling. But unlike public education, it comes at an additional cost that families are increasingly expected to bear.

The scale of this expenditure reveals how deeply private tutoring has embedded itself in the education system. CAMPE’s Education Watch 2023 report estimated that households spent an average of Tk 27,340 annually on a secondary level student in 2022. At the primary level, the average annual education expenditure was Tk 13,882, of which Tk 7,868 went towards private tutoring and coaching. The report also recorded a 51% increase in secondary level household education expenditure during the first six months of 2023, compared with the annualised 2022 figure.

These numbers point to a troubling shift. Education is no longer just an institutional service that families pay for through school fees. It increasingly involves a second layer of spending to secure the academic support students are expected to need beyond the classroom.

And this is not a marginal market. Education Watch data show that 92% of primary students and 93% of secondary students rely on commercially available guidebooks. Private tutoring is also widespread among secondary students. A 2023 market-map study by Future Startup estimated Bangladesh’s offline coaching market at approximately Tk 25,000 crore. What was once supplementary instruction has evolved into a sizable commercial industry.

But what is driving this demand? Is it simply a growing desire among parents to give their children an advantage, or does the education system itself create the conditions that make extra instruction necessary?

A significant part of the answer lies in how academic success is measured. Bangladesh’s education system places considerable emphasis on examinations, grades and competitive admission processes. When a student’s future appears to depend on a limited number of assessments, learning can become less about understanding a subject and more about securing the highest possible score. Families, understandably anxious about the consequences of falling behind, turn to coaching centres and private tutors for an additional layer of preparation.

The 2026 HSC and equivalent examinations recorded a combined pass rate of 52.12%, compared with 58.83% in 2025. Although these figures do not establish any direct relationship between private tutoring and examination performance, they illustrate the uncertainty surrounding academic progression. In an environment where failure carries significant consequences and a question of self worth and respect, the promise of additional preparation becomes an especially powerful selling point.

This is where the problem becomes more systemic. When classroom instruction is perceived as insufficient, the responsibility of making students examinations ready shifts from educational institutions to individual households. Instead of addressing weaknesses in teaching quality, classroom capacity or assessment methods, the system allows a parallel industry to offer families privately purchased solutions.

And the commercial incentives are difficult to overlook.

A student’s academic anxiety becomes a market opportunity. Coaching centres compete through promises of better results, specialised batches, model tests and examination strategies. Guidebooks package knowledge into supposedly essential materials. Private tutors sell individual attention that many students struggle to receive in regular classrooms. The more competitive education becomes, the more valuable these services appear.

The result is an industry that does not necessarily need to solve the underlying problems of education to remain profitable. It only needs families to believe that their children cannot afford to go without its services.

Yet more instruction does not automatically translate into better learning. A 2022 study published in Frontiers in Psychology, based on interviews with higher-secondary students, parents and teachers in Bangladesh, identified both the benefits and limitations of private tutoring. Individualised teaching can help students address learning gaps that crowded classrooms may struggle to accommodate. However, when preparation revolves around memorising model answers, practising predictable questions and mastering examination techniques, students may become better at taking tests without necessarily developing deeper conceptual understanding or critical thinking.

There is also the question of who can afford to participate in this parallel system. A student whose family can pay for specialised tutors, multiple coaching programmes and commercial learning materials has access to resources that another student may never receive. Both may sit the same examination, but their preparation takes place under vastly different conditions. Academic competition therefore risks becoming a competition not only of ability, but also of purchasing power.

Private tutoring itself is not the enemy. It can provide valuable support, especially when students need individual attention. The deeper concern is an education system that increasingly makes such support feel indispensable and a commercial industry that has grown around that dependency.

The responsibility for education cannot simply be transferred to families and the private market. Schools and institutions must be capable of delivering meaningful learning, not merely covering a syllabus. Assessment should reward understanding rather than just memorisation, and classroom instruction should give students a genuine opportunity to develop the skills they are expected to demonstrate in examinations.

In the end, it gives us room to wonder if private tutoring has become successful because it offers a better education, or if it is the education system that left so many families paying twice for education.