50,535 get scholarships

A total of 50,535 students will get the scholarships of Primary Terminal Examinations 2009 this year.
Directorate of Primary Education (DPE) handed over the list of scholarships to the Primary and Mass Education Ministry yesterday.
State Minister for the Primary and Mass Education Motahar Hossain, Secretary in-charge Abu Alam Mohammad Shahid Khan, Director General of Directorate of Primary Education Shyamal Kanti Ghosh and senior officials were present on the occasion.
The scholarships have been given in two categories -- talent pool and general -- on the basis of highest numbers in the examinations. Of the scholarships, 19,995 students got scholarships in talent pool while 30,540 in general category.
The government introduced the public exam for the class V students this year in place of the existing scholarship exam. In the previous system, only 40 percent of primary school students across the country used to sit for the scholarship exam.
A total of 18,23,465 class-V students -- 8,30,879 boys and 9,92,585 girls -- took part in the newly introduced examination. The exam of 2009 saw a pass percentage of 88.84.
However, the number of scholarship has increased by 251 this year. Some 50,284 scholarships -- 19976 in talent pool and 30,308 in general -- were given in the scholarship exams last year.
Students of Dhaka division got the highest number of scholarships as the highest number of students took part in the exams from this division.
The number of scholarship recipients in Dhaka division is 14,621; Rajshahi 12,912; Chittagong 10,285; Khulna 5,919; Barisal 3,412 and Sylhet 3,386.
Briefing the newsmen at his secretariat office, Primary and Mass Education Minister Afsarul Ameen said the list of scholarships is available on the website of DPE (www.dpe.gov.bd/).
He said they expect that the number of scholarships would be increased in the next fiscal year.