

Education in Bhutan

Bhutan’s Education Blueprint details its goals for the education sector as part of the development initiatives outlined in the Bhutan Vision 2020 framework.

The government recognizes education as a basic right and a pre-requisite for achieving the country’s social, cultural, and economic goals. The overall goal is to have an efficient, high-performing and successful education system that prepares students, its future citizens, to thrive in a competitive and fast-homogenizing world with knowledge, intellectual competence, and character.

While the government is committed to developing the education system, progress is constrained by the country’s limited resources. This includes teachers, facilities, and finances.

Socio-economic status, academic performance, and geographical location are barriers to accessing educational opportunities. Student learning outcomes are below minimum expectations and achievement levels decline as children move along grades.

The expansion of primary education has also led to increased pressure on secondary and post-secondary schools due to increased enrollment.

The Ministry of Education has identified 8 areas for change:

  1. Ensure access and equity at all levels of education through a number of initiatives, notably:
    • Promoting early childhood programs and increasing the number of community centers in rural communities.
    • Providing adequate resources to schools, nutritional meals to students, and academic and career counseling services.
    • Increasing investment in special education needs programming, integrating students into mainstream schools, and providing special education training to teachers.
    • Developing a strategic policy to enhance quality-learning outcomes for girls and providing girl-friendly boarding schools.
  2. Revamp curriculum and assessment to enhance student learning through restructuring the education pathway, benchmarking the school curriculum to international standards, and strengthening the assessment system.
  3. Raise learning outcomes of students to match leading international standards through transforming practices to a culture of engagement, facilitating students to be independent learners, and ensuring a healthy physical and psychosocial ambiance.
  4. Transform teaching into a profession of choice through raising teacher morale and motivation, enhancing the quality of professional development, and implementing competency and performance-based career progression.
  5. Ensure high-performing schools and leaders by promoting good governance, training school leaders and teachers, guaranteeing infrastructure meets the minimum standards, and strengthening parent and community involvement.
  6. Leverage information and communication technology to enhance effective communication and enrich student learning.
  7. Enhance education values and wellbeing through promoting the Gross National Happiness development values and principles.
  8. Transform the education system, delivery capabilities, and capacity through reorganizing structures at all levels, encouraging public-private participation, improving reliability and timeliness of data, and establishing a National Teacher Council.

The Education Blueprint also outlines recommended interventions to deal with the challenges related to achieving access to education, quality education, equity in education, and system efficiency.


Source: World Bank - Education Data


Primary Gross Enrollment Rate (%)

Primary Completion Rate (%)

Lower Secondary Completion Rate (%)

Out-of-school Children Rate (%)

Domestic Financing

Public Expenditure on Education as Share of GDP (%)




Student/Trained teacher ratio

Teachers Trained (%)

Last updated May 24, 2017