Since its relatively recent independence in 1971, a total of seven national Education Commissions were formed, all of which placed various degrees of emphasis on the planning, pedagogy and learning of English in Bangladesh. Although the first Education Commission in 1974 aimed to 'decolonise' the education system and effectively exile English from the country, English has always remained a top priority in the school curriculum. Studies have linked this to residual colonial legacy inherited from the British education system. In the backdrop of persistent nationalistic favouritism towards Bengali, English is still widely an area-specific language confined to academia, and English education is often still seen as a purely instrumentalist endeavour. However it is also important as a symbol of socio-intellectual elitism and prestige. Such mixed, often incongruous positions can be seen reflected in the way successive National Education Policies have interacted with Commissions, which some critics have pointed out were formed by various regimes to advance their political agenda and ideology rather than to further the country's pragmatic needs and achieve well-articulated and time-sensitive policy outcomes. This article critically reviews the major trends of English education policy as enacted through four decades of reform and how English has played out in the education system in a developing country fast emerging as a rich ground of alternative educational research. Through a brief chronology of education policy and commissions and drawing on the comparative shifts of emphasis on English through their recommendations over a period of four decades, the article situates the place of English within the pragmatics of a postcolonial mindset and the socio-cultural expectations of stakeholders, and deals with the complexities of transition from policy to practice. In particular it problematises the almost irreconcilable friction between English and Bengali forged through the nationalistic sentiment born in the Language Movement of 1952, an episode unique in the history of the world. Rather than looking into the politics of policy planning and implementation, it looks towards the possibility of an education system that can bring about a healthy juxtaposition between heritage and modernity.

Since the 1990s, enormous changes have been made in the higher education sector in Bangladesh. The government promulgated the Private University Act in 1992, and formulated a 20-year Strategic Plan for Higher Education: 2006-2026. A critical review shows that the objective of the plan is to connect education with market-driven economic forces. This article argues that such a neoliberal policy in the higher education sector will have far-reaching socio-economic consequences in Bangladesh. With a critical investigation of the SPHE, this article explores how the autonomy of public universities is threatened, and how the role of the state is redefined through withdrawing government grants in the higher education sector. By providing three case studies, this article exposes the marketising nature of higher education in contemporary Bangladesh. This article also argues that the resistance against neoliberalism in higher education is another aspect which is organised by different socio-political groups in the higher education institutions.

Bangladesh has introduced neoliberal policies since the 1970s. Military regimes, since the dramatic political changes in 1975, accelerated the process. A succession of military rulers made rigorous changes in policy-making in various sectors. This article uses a critical approach to document analysis and examines the perceptions of key stakeholders to explore how the International Financial Institutions (IFIs), and the economic and political interests of the ruling civil-military elites, worked together to consolidate power and adopt neoliberal policy in various sectors. Moreover, the democratic regimes, since the 1990s, have continued to implement neoliberal policies with support from the IFIs. As part of neoliberalism, the democratic regimes initiated a market-driven economic policy in the higher education sector in the 1990s. The neoliberal transformation of policies has brought major changes in the higher education sector in recent times. This article aims to examine and report on these changes.