The Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) has failed to issue a single unique identification (UID) card under a Tk 1.64 billion project launched in 2019, prompting the government to move for its closure after spending more than Tk 420 million without achieving its core objective.
The Ministry of Primary and Mass Education has proposed closing the project without completing its objectives after spending 25.64 per cent of its approved cost, officials at the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) said.
While reviewing the proposal, the IMED found that data entry had been completed for 10.32 million, representing 35.93 per cent of the overall target to develop digital profiles for 28.7 million primary school students.
However, profiles of only 5.44 million students were ready for UID card printing.
A recent IMED field inspection found that card printing had yet to begin because of widespread errors and inconsistencies in birth registration records, including mismatches in students' and parents' names, discrepancies between Bangla and English spellings, incomplete information, incorrect birth registration details and blank data fields.
The "Primary School Students Profile Preparation Project" was originally scheduled for implementation between March 2019 and December 2021.
Its duration was subsequently extended several times until December 2024 without any increase in the approved project cost.
The fully government-funded project aimed to create a central database containing the personal and family information of students from pre-primary to Grade V and provide each of them with a permanent identification number.
The UID was intended to remain with students throughout their education, enabling the government to track enrolment, transfers and dropouts, while facilitating access to public services.
The database was designed to include students' names, birth registration numbers and addresses, alongside their parents' national identity card numbers and other family information.
Head teachers were responsible for verifying the information, while upazila or thana education officers and assistant upazila education officers were assigned to conduct further verification and approval.
The project authorities signed an agreement with the Office of the Registrar General, Birth and Death Registration, in October 2022 to verify birth records through an application programming interface (API).
Parents' national identity numbers were also to be verified against the Election Commission's database.
The IMED, however, found no effective mechanism to correct incomplete or inconsistent information after discrepancies had been identified.
The absence of such a system prevented the authorities from printing and distributing the cards despite completing millions of student profiles.
The evaluation also identified weaknesses in project management, institutional coordination, software maintenance, data protection and cyber security planning.
Seven officials served as project director during the implementation period, while the post remained vacant at different times. Most of the later project directors performed the role as an additional responsibility.
The IMED said the frequent changes in leadership and prolonged vacancies disrupted implementation continuity and weakened accountability.
The project also lacked a clear mechanism for collecting and verifying information on students enrolled in non-government primary schools. It made no adequate provision for training teachers at such institutions, despite including their students within the project's coverage.
The IMED recommended undertaking a comprehensive data-cleaning exercise to correct mismatched, incomplete and erroneous records.
It also proposed establishing a permanent institutional mechanism for updating student information, maintaining the software, safeguarding data, printing UID cards and distributing them to eligible students.
The unfinished activities could either be incorporated into the DPE's regular operations or implemented through a separate follow-up project, subject to government approval, it said.
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