DHAKA — The government has launched a plan to set up smart classrooms in selected secondary schools to modernize secondary education, make it more technology-driven and bring it up to global standards.
Under a proposed project, 300 new smart classrooms will be set up in 150 selected public and private secondary schools. The project will also cover a basic renovation of 300 existing classrooms, recording rooms, meeting rooms and a central data center.
The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) said the project’s feasibility study has been completed. The project will be implemented with financial grants and technical assistance from the Chinese government.
The proposed cost of the new artificial intelligence (AI)- and cloud-based project is about 135 crore taka (about $11.2 million). Work is under way to complete the initial steps quickly with a view to launching the project in the 2026-27 fiscal year.
Khan Moinuddin Al Mahmud Sohel, director general of DSHE, said the Chinese government has shown deep interest in modernizing Bangladesh’s secondary education and making it more technology-driven. A project has been proposed under a Chinese grant to set up smart classrooms in selected public and private secondary schools, he said.
“The classrooms in the selected schools will have modern, well-equipped and world-class facilities of every kind. If all goes well, we plan to start the project from the next fiscal year,” he said.
The DSHE project proposal says each school will receive two interactive education panels (IEPs). The classrooms will have automatic recording systems powered by AI, allowing lectures by experienced teachers to be saved as videos. Students in remote areas can access them through a cloud platform. Students will also be able to instantly retrieve class notes and courseware by scanning a QR code.
The initiative will help reduce the digital divide in the education sector and improve quality, said Mir Jahida Naznin, director (planning and development) at DSHE.
“The feasibility study for the proposed smart classroom project, funded by a Chinese grant, has been completed. A state-of-the-art data center will be set up under the project. We have written to the Bangladesh Computer Council (BCC) to determine the data center’s location,” she said.
Once the location is finalized, formal approval will come from the Chinese government, she said. The directorate has asked the Planning Commission to include the project on the so-called Green List. “We hope field work on this project can begin in the 2026-27 fiscal year,” she said.
According to the project proposal, 300 multimedia smart classrooms, 10 modern recording studios and 30 special meeting rooms for government education offices will be set up. A state-of-the-art networking and cloud-based data center will be installed on the DSHE premises to centrally connect smart-teaching activities nationwide.
Sifatul Islam, a research officer at DSHE’s research and innovation wing, said the feasibility study has been completed and final reports are being prepared. After that, work will begin on a technical assistance project proposal (TAPP), to be drawn up jointly by the Bangladesh government and the Chinese side.
Once the TAPP is prepared, it will be reviewed by the education ministry and then sent to the Planning Commission, Islam said. After approval at the Project Evaluation Committee (PEC) meeting, the education ministry will begin the final steps to implement the project.
Earlier, the Chinese government hired a specialist firm to carry out the feasibility study. The Economic Relations Division (ERD) of the Bangladesh government oversaw the process. DSHE also nominated a contact person to monitor the study, and preliminary technical talks were held between the directorate’s EMIS cell and the Chinese observer team.
As part of the initiative, the education ministry on April 16 issued a no-objection for a Huawei-proposed program titled “One Classroom, One Smart Board and One Teacher, One Tab”.
The pilot program is starting at Betgari Mir Shah Alam Girls’ High School in Bogura and Obaidul Haque High School in Chandpur. A Huawei delegation recently visited Chandpur as part of the rollout, research officer Sifatul Islam said.
Tanzina Shahrin, deputy secretary (planning) of the secondary and higher education division of the education ministry, said: “We want to start the project from the next fiscal year, that is from July. Work is going on with that target.”
Education ministry officials said the addition of AI and cloud technology will encourage students to develop analytical and technical skills rather than relying on rote learning, and will play a leading role in building the “Bangladesh of tomorrow”.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report