Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid yesterday told parliament that registration of an educational institution would be cancelled if any of its teachers was found involved in leaking question papers.

"Action will be taken not only against the teacher concerned, but also registration of the respective educational institution will be scrapped,” he told the House with Speaker Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury presiding.

In reply to lawmakers' queries, Nahid said, “There is a chance of leaking question papers from the BG Press, but some teachers are involved in the incident to embarrass the government.”

In response to another question, the minister informed the House that the inclusion of non-MPO schools in the Monthly Pay Order facility was now under the government's consideration.

He said a policy for formulating the organogram of educational institutions and for MPO benefits had been prepared following the prime minister's directives. "On January 1, 2018, the policy was sent to the finance ministry for required opinions and approval."

Responding to another query, Nahid said the teacher-student ratio in the country's public universities is 1:20.

Meanwhile, Primary and Mass Education Minister Mostafizur Rahman yesterday told parliament that posts of around 20,847 headmasters lie vacant at primary schools.

Answering to a question, he said according to the Annual Primary School Census-2017, the dropout rate in the country's primary education is 18.8 percent.

Poverty, unawareness, child labour and illiteracy are among the main reasons behind the dropouts, the minister said.

The government has taken up different programmes at the field-level to prevent the dropouts, he added.