Regular promotions in administration and police, but not in education cadre

Officials recruited to the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS) General Education cadre through the 36th BCS examination joined the service more than eight years ago, in September 2018. They are now in their ninth year of service. Yet they remain in the entry-level post of lecturer. They have not received any promotion during this period.

Officers of the 36th BCS are not the only ones affected. There are numerous instances of BCS General Education cadre officials serving in the same posts for years on end. Many have had to wait a long time for promotion even after acquiring the required qualifications and work experience.

This has caused anger and frustration among them. They are demanding an end to the prolonged delays in promotion. Meanwhile, lecturers have launched a movement demanding swift promotions.

The promotion crisis in the education cadre is not merely a matter of personal benefits or the desire for higher ranks. It also concerns the professional advancement of qualified officials, as well as the efficiency of education administration and workforce management.

The professional advancement of qualified officials, along with the efficiency of education administration and workforce management, is also at stake. This is a matter of concern for the education sector because prolonged barriers to career progression affect those who teach students and play a role in running educational activities.

According to the Public Service Commission (PSC), officials are recruited to 26 cadres in the Bangladesh Civil Service (BCS). There are disparities among these cadres in terms of promotion opportunities and various benefits.

Education cadre officials allege that, despite joining the service at the same time, they have fewer opportunities for promotion than officials in several other cadres, including administration, police, foreign affairs, taxation and agriculture.

In some other cadres, promotions are arranged by creating supernumerary posts even when there are not enough vacant positions. In the education cadre, however, initiatives to create such posts are being blocked on the grounds of administrative and financial complexities.

By numerical standards, the BCS General Education cadre is one of the largest cadres. It currently has around 16,000 posts, of which more than 1,000 are vacant. Most officers in this cadre teach at government colleges.

Others work in education-related offices, including the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), various education boards, the National Academy for Educational Management (NAEM) and the Directorate of Inspection and Audit.

Their main posts are professor, associate professor, assistant professor and lecturer.

The difficulties surrounding promotion from lecturer to assistant professor have now become acute. To qualify for promotion to assistant professor, lecturers generally must complete five years of continuous and satisfactory service in their post, pass the senior scale examination, receive satisfactory annual confidential reports (ACRs) and complete Foundation Training Course (FTC).

According to DSHE sources, most lecturers from the 36th, 37th and 38th BCS batches have acquired these qualifications. They joined the service in Grade 9 and remain in the same grade. In other words, despite gaining the required experience and qualifications, they have to wait to move to the next position.

The officers questions if they have to remain in the same post for years after meeting the prescribed eligibility criteria for promotion, what is the point of fulfilling those requirements?

Promotion is not merely a matter of a salary increase; it represents professional advancement, recognition of responsibility and an opportunity to move to the next stage of a career. As a result, prolonged delays in promotion despite meeting the required qualifications are undermining officers’ morale and professional expectations.

On promotion to assistant professor, officers will be placed in Grade 6 of the national pay scale. Under the 2026 national pay scale, the starting basic salary in Grade 6 will be Tk 71,000, compared with Tk 35,500 under the old pay structure introduced in 2015.

They will also be entitled to various allowances, including house rent, medical and mobile phone allowances. Once the allowances also come into effect in January 2028, an officer in this position will receive a total salary of more than Tk 100,000.

According to a source at the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), there are 4,980 sanctioned posts for assistant professors in the BCS General Education cadre. Of these, 4,031 are currently filled, leaving 949 vacancies.

Meanwhile, 1,684 officers have met the eligibility criteria for promotion to assistant professor. This means the number of officers eligible for promotion exceeds the number of vacant posts by 735.

This discrepancy has emerged as one of the main reasons for the complications surrounding promotions, as promotions in the education cadre are generally made against vacant posts.

As the number of vacancies is lower than the number of officers eligible for promotion, DSHE has also requested permission to grant promotions by creating additional posts.

However, creating such posts involves legal and administrative procedures. The Ministry of Education cannot make the decision on its own; approval from the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Public Administration is required.

According to the DSHE source, the Ministry of Finance has not given its approval on the matter. As a result, not all officers are being promoted despite meeting the eligibility criteria.

A DSHE source said that, for now, the authorities are considering granting promotions against the 949 vacant posts. However, officers eligible for promotion argue that promotions should not be limited to vacant posts and that everyone who has met the eligibility criteria must be included.

Promotions in the BCS General Education cadre are generally granted against vacant posts. As a result, differences in promotion arise even among officers from the same BCS batch.

In some subjects, promotions are granted because posts are vacant, while qualified officers in other subjects have to wait because no posts are available. To reduce this problem, batch-based promotions have been introduced.

However, questions remain over whether the problem can be resolved permanently unless the complications surrounding the creation of sufficient posts and the implementation of promotion policies are addressed in addition to the initiative for batch-based promotions.

This is because, when there is a gap between the number of officers eligible for promotion and the number of vacant posts, processing promotions by batch alone cannot ensure that everyone is promoted.

Several officers from the 36th BCS education cadre said that, while officers from one or more subsequent BCS batches had been promoted in the administration and several other cadres, they had yet to receive promotions in the education cadre. They cited the promotion of 38th BCS administration cadre officers to the post of senior assistant secretary (Grade 6) as an example.

However, a DSHE source said meetings of the Departmental Promotion Committee (DPC) were currently under way to consider promotions to assistant professor.

The documents of officers up to the 37th BCS batch had been scrutinised. Further meetings would be held on the matter, said the source concerned. The most recent promotions to assistant professor took place in November 2025.

There are complications not only with promotion from lecturer to assistant professor, but also with promotion to associate professor and professor. As a result, officers in the cadre face long waits for promotion at various stages of their careers.

While officers in various cadres, including the administration, police, foreign affairs and tax cadres, have opportunities to reach Grade 1, education cadre officers have virtually no such opportunity. Previously, education cadre officers could rise to Grade 3. However, under the 2015 national pay scale, they can now reach only Grade 4 at most.

The post of director general (DG) of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE), regarded as the highest position in the education cadre, was upgraded to Grade 1. However, as education cadre officers generally cannot rise above Grade 4, opportunities to advance through Grades 3 and 2 to Grade 1 are very limited.

The current director general, Khan Moinuddin Al Mahmud Sohel, draws a Grade 4 salary, the same grade as many associate professors at colleges. Although a few DSHE director generals have occasionally reached Grade 1, this is not possible for most of them.

A decision was taken to upgrade the posts of principals at 95 major government colleges to Grade 3. However, candidates seeking promotion to these higher-grade posts would have to go through the Superior Selection Board (SSB).

There were also objections among education cadre officers to the small number of Grade 3 posts. As a result, the decision was not implemented. Education cadre officers want a system that would allow professors to move to Grade 3 more easily.

In this regard, they cite public universities as an example, saying that 25 per cent of professors there have the opportunity to be promoted to Grade 1.

Lecturers in the BCS General Education cadre have launched a movement demanding an end to long-standing denial of promotions and the resolution of complications surrounding the promotion process. They staged a sit-in outside the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education (DSHE) on 25 October.

At the programme, they also called for promotions through the creation of supernumerary posts and for the professor’s post to be upgraded to Grade 3. They want an end to the situation in which they remain stuck in the same post for years despite meeting the eligibility requirements.

Asked about the matter, DSHE Director General Khan Moinuddin Al Mahmud Sohel told Prothom Alo that the process of promoting lecturers to assistant professors was under way. Meetings of the Departmental Promotion Committee were also continuing. He hoped promotions to this post would take place soon. Efforts were also under way to ensure regular promotions to other posts.

However, the key question for the officers now is how quickly assurances that the promotion process is under way will translate into action. A large number of them have been waiting for years despite having acquired the necessary qualifications.

Expressing frustration over the lack of promotions, an officer in the BCS General Education cadre told Prothom Alo, “We train officers in every cadre (as teachers), yet there are so many problems when it comes to our own promotions.”