Free textbooks for 70 lakh secondary students from next year

The government on Thursday decided to distribute textbooks among all the 70 lakh secondary students free from the academic year 2010, the education minister, Nurul Islam Nahid, told New Age.
‘The decision was made at a meeting attended by the finance minister and the chairman and members of the parliamentary standing committee on education ministry,’ said the minister who also attended the meeting.
‘About Tk 283 crore will be spent on printing, publishing and distribution of textbooks for students in a year and the finance minister has agreed to release the fund,’ the standing committee chairman, Rashed Khan Menon, said after the meeting.
According to an education ministry assessment, Tk 236.5 crore will be spent on books for about 58 lakh students of schools in a year and Tk 39.15 crore for books on about 11.25 lakh students of madrassahs.
About Tk 7.6 crore has been earmarked for the students of technical educational institutions, but the ministry is yet to estimate the number of students to be given textbooks free.
‘The ruling party in its election manifesto pledged to provide education free for students up to bachelor’s level. And the decision on free textbook distribution among students of Class VI to X is a step forward towards fulfilling the electoral pledges,’ Menon said.
‘The free distribution of textbooks will help to increase enrolment rate for secondary education and to contain dropout rate. Traders in textbooks will not get any more chance to create any artificial crisis regarding textbook distribution,’ said another member, who also attended the meeting. ‘The students will get textbooks on time.’
In its report submitted to the government on April 16, the 15-member expert committee also recommended that the government should distribute secondary textbooks free as part of a permanent solution to textbook crisis.
Against the backdrop of acute supply shortage, the government on March 9 formed the committee headed by Dhaka University history professor M Aktaruzzaman and asked the committee to submit recommendations to the government so that secondary students could get textbooks on time.
All the primary schoolchildren, except for the students of kindergartens, English-medium schools and some specialised schools, are given textbooks free by the government.

Courtesy of  NewAgebd