The BNP-led government plans to introduce a new curriculum at the primary and secondary levels from 2028, adding four new subjects: Learning with Happiness, sports, culture, and technical and vocational education. Students will study sports and culture compulsorily from grade 4; on reaching secondary level — grade 6 — they will take “technical and vocational education” and “Learning with Happiness.”
Asked about the plans for the sports and culture subjects, State Minister for Primary and Mass Education Bobby Hajjaj said that although various games and cultural practice run in schools, none of it is part of the current curriculum — nor ever has been. Sports and culture should always be in the curriculum, he said, which is why the government will add the two subjects as soon as possible. But because of various constraints, not everything can take effect from day one: “For example, we want to add eight sports at primary level. That is not possible at once. So we will try to add at least two or three sports,” he said — with football and chess being prioritised for now and the rest added later. The prime minister’s education adviser Mahdi Amin said cricket could also be included from the start.
The same applies to culture: song, recitation, debate and extempore speaking will feature. The culture subject has been split in two — performative and expressive. “Students will be able to choose from song, dance, speech, painting, literature and so on. These will change after the pilot,” Bobby Hajjaj said. Performative means students present an artistic or cultural work directly — demonstrating their skill before others; in expressive, what matters more than stage performance is conveying one’s own thoughts or feelings, with creative self-expression at the core.
Asked what “technical and vocational education” means, Mahdi Amin said technical education is viewed differently by society — a perception the government wants to break by bringing it into mainstream education: “We want every school in Bangladesh to have a technical lab,” ensuring practical learning alongside book learning. University is not the only path for every student, he said: if many students acquire technical and vocational skills from school level, they can create employment and become self-reliant without going to university.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report