Bangladesh is preparing to take a swing at an educational phenomenon that has quietly reshaped how millions of students learn: the private coaching centre. These after-school tutoring operations have proliferated across the country in recent years, filling gaps left by an overstretched public education system. Now authorities want to ban them outright.

It's a bold move. It's also, according to many education specialists, almost certainly doomed to fail.

The proposed ban represents the latest attempt by Bangladeshi authorities to address persistent concerns about educational quality and equity. Coaching centres — which range from small neighbourhood operations to sprawling commercial enterprises — have become so embedded in the educational landscape that many families consider them essential rather than supplementary. Students attend regular school during the day, then spend evenings and weekends at coaching centres preparing for the same exams their teachers are supposed to be preparing them for.

The Parallel System

The irony is difficult to miss. Bangladesh has invested considerably in expanding access to education over the past two decades, with near-universal primary enrolment and significant gains in secondary attendance. Yet this official success story runs parallel to an unofficial one: a shadow education system that has grown precisely because the formal system cannot deliver what it promises.

According to The Business Standard's reporting, the coaching centre industry has become so entrenched that it effectively functions as a necessary complement to regular schooling rather than an optional extra. Parents who can afford the fees pay them, often reluctantly. Those who cannot watch their children fall further behind peers whose families have deeper pockets.

The government's frustration is understandable. The coaching centre boom has created a two-tier system where educational outcomes increasingly depend on family income rather than student ability. It has also created perverse incentives — teachers who run private coaching operations have little motivation to cover material thoroughly during school hours when they can charge for it later.

Treating Symptoms, Ignoring Disease

But here's where the proposal runs into trouble. Banning coaching centres addresses the visible manifestation of educational inequality without touching the underlying causes. It's the policy equivalent of treating a fever while ignoring the infection.

The structural weaknesses in Bangladesh's school system are well-documented. Classrooms are overcrowded, often with 60 or more students per teacher. Resources are limited. Teacher training is inconsistent. Curricula are examination-focused, prioritising rote memorisation over critical thinking. And perhaps most importantly, teacher salaries remain low enough that many educators must supplement their income somehow — which is precisely how many coaching centres are staffed in the first place.

Remove the coaching centres without addressing these fundamentals, and you haven't solved the problem. You've simply forced it underground or into different forms. Students will still need additional help. Parents will still seek it out. The market doesn't disappear because you've declared it illegal.

The East Asian Precedent

Bangladesh isn't the first country to grapple with this issue. South Korea has spent decades trying to regulate its hagwon industry — private cram schools that have become integral to Korean education despite government efforts to curtail them. Japan's juku system persists despite similar concerns. China has recently launched aggressive crackdowns on private tutoring, with mixed results and significant unintended consequences.

The pattern across East Asia suggests that shadow education systems emerge in response to high-stakes examination cultures and perceived inadequacies in formal schooling. Banning them without reforming the underlying system simply drives the activity into less visible, less regulated spaces. Wealthy families hire private tutors. Middle-class families form informal study groups. Poor families are left with nothing.

The Alternative Path

A more effective approach would tackle the problem from the supply side rather than the demand side. If students are seeking coaching centres because school instruction is inadequate, improve school instruction. If teachers are moonlighting because salaries are insufficient, raise salaries and enforce conflicts of interest. If classrooms are too crowded for effective teaching, reduce class sizes.

None of this is easy, and all of it is expensive. It requires sustained investment in education infrastructure, teacher training, and compensation. It requires curriculum reform that moves beyond examination preparation. It requires political will to prioritise long-term educational quality over short-term political gestures.

Banning coaching centres is the easier path politically. It allows authorities to appear decisive and reform-minded without committing to the difficult, costly work of actually fixing schools. It satisfies public frustration with educational inequality while avoiding the hard questions about why that inequality exists in the first place.

The Risk of Good Intentions

The danger is that the ban, if implemented, could actually worsen the inequalities it aims to address. Coaching centres, for all their flaws, at least operate in the open where they can be monitored and regulated. Drive them underground and you lose even that limited oversight. More importantly, you remove an educational resource that, however imperfect, currently helps students from modest backgrounds compete with wealthier peers who will always find ways to secure additional educational support.

This isn't an argument for the status quo. The coaching centre industry in its current form represents a market failure — the privatisation of what should be a public good, with all the inequities that implies. But addressing that failure requires more than prohibition. It requires building an educational system robust enough that families don't feel compelled to seek alternatives.

Until Bangladesh commits to that deeper reform — investing in schools, supporting teachers, reducing class sizes, reforming curricula — banning coaching centres is just a band-aid. And band-aids don't heal broken bones. They just hide the fracture until it gets worse.