43.92 lakh students attended 80,873 online classes in March-September 2020: finance minister

A total of 43.92 lakh students have taken part in online education in the country from March to September last year, Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal said today.

The total duration of the 80,873 classes they attended from March to September is one lakh three thousand and 206 hours, the finance minister told the parliament today while sharing the report on budget realisation of first three months of the current fiscal year.

The government's most important job in the next fiscal year would be continuation of the curriculum by compensating for the loss due to the closure of educational institutions, the finance minister said.

"That's why we are emphasising on technology-based, workplace-friendly technical and vocational education," he said.

In the secondary stage, 15,676 schools out of 20,499 held online classes in the time period while almost 700 colleges out of a total of 4,238 held online classes.

Under Bangladesh Technical Education Board, teachers are conducting classes using various social media such as YouTube, Facebook, Google Class, Microsoft Team, Zoom etc, he also said.