Exploring the Digital Transformation of Bangladesh's Education System: A Critical Narrative Review of ICT Integration
Bangladesh has pursued information and communication technology in education through digital content, multimedia classrooms, teacher-development initiatives, online platforms and, more recently, an explicit policy commitment to blended learning. Yet the system’s digital transformation remains uneven, with substantial differences between policy ambition, institutional capacity and learners’ actual opportunities to benefit. This critical narrative review examines the trajectory of technology integration across primary, secondary and higher education, evaluates the implementation barriers revealed before and during the coronavirus disease 2019 disruption, and develops priorities for a more equitable and educationally consequential transformation. Literature published principally from 2009 to 21 May 2026 was identified through live searches of accessible scholarly indexes, journal and DOI records, institutional repositories and authoritative national and international sources, supplemented by citation searching. The evidence indicates that Bangladesh has expanded the visibility and acceptability of digital education, but much of the empirical literature measures attitudes, intentions and self-reported experiences rather than learning outcomes, institutional performance or long-term equity effects. The strongest recurring constraints are unreliable connectivity and electricity, device and data affordability, multidimensional digital exclusion, weak pedagogical integration, uneven teacher support, limited institutional readiness, fragile maintenance arrangements and misalignment between digital delivery, curriculum and assessment. Pandemic-era online learning accelerated experimentation but also exposed a system dependent on household resources and urban connectivity. Studies of teacher development suggest that school-embedded, iterative and context-sensitive support is more credible than short technical training, while higher-education studies consistently favour blended over fully online provision. Future progress therefore depends less on adding isolated platforms than on building a resilient learning ecosystem that guarantees minimum access, strengthens teacher and leadership capability, supports Bangla and accessible content, governs data and artificial intelligence responsibly, and evaluates whether technology improves learning, inclusion and system responsiveness.