Textbook festival begins amid hartal
Amid Jamaat-e-Islami’s daylong hartal, textbook festival has begun in all the schools across the country in a delightfully happy mood on the first day of the year.
Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid and Primary and Mass Education Minister Mostafizur Rahman inaugurated the distribution of books at Motijheel Govt Boys School in Dhaka around 10:30am in celebration of "Textbook Festival".
This year the government is set to distribute more than 32 crore textbooks among around 4.44 crore primary and secondary level students.
Students went to their school to receive free textbooks defying today’s hartal that enforced by the Jamaat protesting death penalty verdict on it’s leader ATM Azharul Islam in a war crimes case.
The education minister earlier alleged that the anti-liberation Jamaat-Shibir had called the hartal with intent to destroy the country's education system and the new generations. He also urged the Jamaat-e-Islami to call off the strike.
The government has printed around 32.63 crore copies of textbooks to distribute among students of primary and secondary schools, ebtedai and dakhil madrasas and technical institutions.
The National Curriculum and Textbook Board officials said they had dispatched almost all textbooks to the upazila headquarters.
However, insiders said there were some upazilas in a few districts like Patuakhali, Shariatpur and Tangail where schools had not received all textbooks.
Against the backdrop of a failed track record, the government started distributing free textbooks in 2010. Before that, the government used to provide free textbooks only for primary students, while secondary students had to buy their books.
An artificial crisis used to be created by a syndicate of printers and government officials, forcing secondary-level students to buy books well into the first quarter of the academic session. Free distribution of textbooks has contributed to increasing the number of students over the past five years.
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