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Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal on Thursday increased the budget allocation for education sector to Tk 664 billion in the proposed budget for the fiscal year of 2020-21 (FY21).
The finance minister allocated Tk 249.37 billion for the primary and mass education ministry, Tk 331.18 billion for secondary and higher education division and TK 83.45 billion for technical and madrasa education division.
According to budget documents, allocation for the education sector was Tk 611.18 billion in the ongoing fiscal year (FY20).
In his budget speech, the finance minister said “You are aware that we have declared holidays to all academic institutions of the country since mid-March as part of our efforts to enforce social distancing to contain the spread of novel coronavirus”.
This has essentially caused a discontinuation of regular academic curriculum of around 40 million students across the country, Mr Kamal pointed out.
Although the government has introduced the distance learning programme on a limited scale during the holidays, the loss to the overall education sector has been enormous, he said.
“Our most important task in education for the next fiscal year would be to bring back continuity in the curriculum and cover this loss from a long study break”, the finance minister said.
In terms of primary and mass education, he said primary education is the stepping stone for creation of skilled human resources, which in turn is the prerequisite for economic development.
“Hence, we have given higher priority on primary education, and in the Seventh Five Year Plan that is concluding this year, we have set out bold targets to achieve cent per cent enrolment in primary education, the rate of enrolment of children up to Grade V and the universal literacy rate for everyone above seven years of age”, he added.