The Bangladesh Mathematical Society (BMS) is the IMU adhering organization for Bangladesh. The country representative for ICMI is nominated by the Society through a process of consultation by its executive committee meeting. BMS was founded in 1972 just after the liberation war. The prime goal of Bangladesh Mathematical Society (BMS) is to promote mathematics education in Bangladesh from school to university level. Another goal of BMS is to enhance research work in pure and applied mathematics as well as other mathematical sciences. The major institutions offering mathematics education are the Department of Mathematics of the University of Dhaka, Jahangirnagar University, Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Rajshahi University, Chittagong University, Khulna University, and more.
Journals for Mathematics Education Research
Mathematics departments of almost all universities of Bangladesh carry out mathematics research, principally constituted as quantitative parametric research. There are a few centers of education research in the country which carry out research that gets published in international avenues. BMS publishes a research journal in English named “GANIT” which publishes only original research work. Rather unfortunately, there are no journals in India dedicated to research on school education, either in mathematics or other disciplines.
In addition, BMS organizes an International Mathematics Conferences and a National Mathematics Conference in alternative years at different universities of Bangladesh on different areas of mathematics.
Mathematics Teacher Education
The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) https://bd-directory.com/NCTB_Bangladesh.html established in 1971 is an independent organization under the Ministry of Education in Bangladesh. It prepares curricula and develops, prints, and distributes textbooks for primary and secondary schools in Bangladesh. All public schools and many private schools in Bangladesh follow the NCTB curriculum. Since 2010, free books are given to students from Grade 1 to Grade 10 every year to help eliminate illiteracy. There is a two-language version of the curriculum: one in Bengali and another one in English.
In the current system, primary school teachers are generalists who obtain a two-year diploma in education after completing 12 years of schooling. Middle school teachers have an undergraduate degree specializing in mathematics. Higher secondary teachers, who teach students during the last two years before university, need to have a disciplinary Master’s degree. BMS has undertaken training programs for teachers at college and university-college levels. BMS also organizes various seminars on mathematics teaching and mathematics education occasionally.
National syllabus and Standards
Mathematics is a foundational subject that underpins many disciplines, including science, technology, engineering, and economics. In Bangladesh, mathematics education plays a vital role in national development goals, including the push toward a knowledge-based society. Here, mathematics is introduced at the primary level and remains a compulsory subject through the secondary level of education. As a result, students are required to study mathematics for a total of ten years. The BMS has played great role from time to time in updating the school and college level textbooks and formulating standard mathematics curriculum at school and college levels.The structure of Mathematics Education is as follows.
a. Primary and Secondary Education
Curriculum: Mathematics is a compulsory subject from Class I to Class X, following the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB).
Assessment: Students are assessed through national public exams such as the PEC (Primary Education Completion), JSC (Junior School Certificate, recently phased out), SSC (Secondary School Certificate), and HSC (Higher Secondary Certificate).
Medium of Instruction: Primarily Bangla, though English-medium and English-version schools also follow Cambridge/O-Level syllabi.
b. Tertiary Education
Mathematics is taught at:
Public universities (e.g., Dhaka University, Rajshahi University, Jahangirnagar University)
Private universities
National University-affiliated colleges
Offers BSc, MSc, MPhil, and PhD degrees.
Mathematics is also a service subject for engineering, computer science, economics, etc.
On the website: Bangladesh Mathematical Society and NCTB you can find various resources about mathematics education curricula, text books, teacher education and other useful texts and links.