PM inaugurates textbook distribution

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina today formally inaugurated the distribution of free textbooks to school students with a pledge to do whatever necessary for the improvement and flourishing of education in the country.

Hasina inaugurated the distribution of free textbooks up to secondary level through giving books to some students of class I-IX of different schools and madrasas at a simple ceremony at her official Gono Bhaban residence.

Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid, among others, spoke on the occasion.

The Education Ministry will hold the much-awaited “Textbook Festival Day” Thursday as schools and madrasa will remain closed today (Wednesday) on the occasion of Akheri Chahar Shomba. Usually, the textbook festival is held on the first day of a year.

The education minister will inaugurate the festival at the Government Laboratory School in the capital around 11:00am Thursday.

Mentioning that there is nothing more important than the huge public investment in education, the prime minister said the reason for this is to make the future leaders of the country educated since there is the need of an educated nation to make a poverty-free society.

“Education is our biggest asset and we want to build an educated nation for which we’re determined to do whatever necessary for improvement and flourishing of education,” she added.

Hasina said that when her government had initiated the task of free distribution of school textbooks, the major aim was to lessen the financial pressure on the guardians of the students.

Amid some sort of concern and apprehension about reaching the textbooks to the schools across the country in due time because of political turmoil last year, she thanked the Ministry of Education and others concerned for successfully completing the task.

Criticising the opposition BNP-Jamaat’s countrywide movements over the last few months, the prime minister said: “Their (BNP-Jamaat) movements are not mass-associated, rather subversive in nature.

“It was very difficult to reach books throughout the country under such a situation when the opposition were engaged in burning people to death, even burning cows to death hurling petrol bomb in cow-laden trucks… also vegetable-laden trucks.”

She congratulated the Ministry of Education and all others concerned who made the “impossible to possible” by reaching the textbooks across the country in time.

Stressing the need for determining the subjects keeping pace with the modern world, Hasina said that in future, the number of school textbooks would be reduced for different classes.

She extended her sincere thanks to the students of JSC, JDC and PSC for their outstanding feat in the recently published results defying the opposition’s frequent hartals, blockades and other programmes.

Education ministry sources said that this year, the government will distribute more than 29,96,75,938 copies of textbooks to more than 3.74 crore students of primary, secondary, ebtedayee (primary level of madrasah), dakhil (secondary level of madrasah) and vocational classes of the 2014 academic session.

Against the backdrop of severe textbook crisis, the Awami-League led Grand Alliance government had taken up the uphill task of distributing school textbooks to students free of cost in 2009 and since then it has been distributing books at the very beginning of academic sessions.