The government is moving to nationalise Alia madrasas in the country’s eight divisions. Several senior officials of the education ministry’s Technical and Madrasa Education Division and the Madrasah Education Board confirmed this to The Daily Campus on Thursday (September 24).
“Preliminary discussions on nationalising Alia madrasas at divisional level have been held at several education ministry meetings,” they said. “It is still at an early stage, but in the discussions the government officials concerned see it positively and feel it is needed.”
“There are government schools and colleges in every district, but only three government madrasas,” a senior official of the Madrasa and Technical Education Division told The Daily Campus. “That number is very small. Bringing madrasas under the government has come up at several meetings with the education minister. I hope something good will happen under this government.”
There are only three government Alia madrasas in the country. One is Government Madrasah-e-Alia in Dhaka, founded in Kolkata in 1780. After partition in 1947 it moved from Kolkata to Dhaka, and in 1961 it began operating on its permanent campus in Bakshibazar.
Sylhet Government Alia Madrasa was re-established as a senior madrasa at Chowhatta in Sylhet town in 1913, on the initiative of Khan Bahadur Syed Abdul Majid, then education minister of the Assam government, under Kolkata Alia Madrasa. It became a high madrasa under the New Scheme in 1933 and gained recognition for Kamil Hadith in 1935, making it the first Kamil madrasa in Bangladesh’s Alia madrasa stream. Government Mustafabia Alia Madrasa was founded in 1925 and nationalised in 1986.
While the country has 65,569 government primary schools and 708 government colleges, along with government schools and colleges at upazila and district level, it has only three government madrasas. According to BANBEIS education statistics for 2024, there are 694 government secondary schools, and about 20,000 MPO-listed private schools and colleges.
There are also 8,229 MPO-listed private madrasas: 5,767 at dakhil level, 1,285 alim, 993 fazil and 184 kamil. There are 1,258 independent ebtedayee madrasas.
Officials said that because there are government schools and colleges across the country but no government madrasas at divisional or district level, students miss out on the benefits of government institutions, and madrasas should be nationalised at least at divisional level to begin with. Alia madrasa students are advancing in higher education despite limited opportunities, and those who pass from private institutions are gaining admission to Dhaka University and other public universities, medical colleges and BUET, they said, so nationalising madrasas is urgent.
With government Alia madrasas limited to three, opportunities for madrasa education at government institutions are comparatively scarce. If more government Alia madrasas were created, particularly at divisional level, students across the country could study at Alia madrasas under government management.
“Compared with general students, madrasa students are studying with relatively higher marks,” Madrasah Education Board chairman Professor Khondoker Mohammad Sadequr Rahman told The Daily Campus. “They are working hard and making their mark in higher education. So if madrasas are nationalised, students will be able to study at lower cost and the quality of education will also improve.”
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report