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The government has proposed to allocate Tk 388.19 billion (Tk 38,819 crore) in the Primary and Mass Education sector in the national budget for FY 2024-25.
Finance Minister AH Mahmood Ali proposed the allocation while placing the national budget at the Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban on Thursday, UNB reports.
Last year, the government allocated Tk 347.22 billion (Tk 34,722 crore) in this sector for FY 2023-24.
“A child's knowledge base is formed at the primary level of education. Therefore, the impact of primary education on national development is significant and it is one of the main steps to ensure sustainable development,” said the finance minister while placing the budget.
In view of this, new activities will be taken up for the development of this sector besides speeding up the ongoing activities for the development of primary education, he added.
He said 2,38,579 teachers have been recruited from 2009 to 2023 and 26,366 new posts of assistant teachers have been created to ensure the quality of education and to increase the teacher-student ratio.
As a result, the number of teachers increased from 1 for every 52 students in 2006 to 1 for every 33 students in 2022.
Also, primary school teachers are being trained in 5 core and 3 non-core subjects to improve their skills, said the minister.
Additionally, subject-wise training has been provided to 0.537 million (5.37 lakh) teachers in English and Mathematics and 27 other subjects. ICT labs with sophisticated technology have been set up in 67 PTIs for teachers’ training purposes, he mentioned.
The ongoing school feeding program for more than 2.7 million (27 lakh) students from 15,470 government primary schools in 104 upazilas of the country through the project titled 'School Feeding in Poverty-stricken Areas' has been completed recently.
In continuation of this, a project has been taken up with the aim of starting a 'School Feeding Program' in all primary schools from 150 upazilas of the country. The net enrolment rate in primary education has increased from 90.8 per cent in 2009 to 97.56 per cent in 2022 as a result of well-thought-out government policies.
At the same time, the dropout rate in primary education was 45.1 per cent in 2009, which declined to 13.95 per cent in 2022.
Besides, steps have been taken to modernize the national primary education framework and its evaluation system.
More than 0.1 million (1 lakh) laptops, multimedia projectors, sound-systems with the internet have been distributed and multimedia classrooms have been launched in government primary schools.