DHAKA, June 7, 2018 (BSS) – Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith today
proposed an allocation of Taka 53,054 crore for education in the national
budget for 2018-19 fiscal.
He said, “We have already made significant progress in promoting primary
education. Now we want to focus on providing education supportive of bringing
about fundamental changes in living standard and to creating better learning
environment at schools.”
“We believe that if a child starts growing up with the habit of following
rules of personal hygiene and maintaining cleanliness of his surrounding,
morality, discipline and responsibility, life skills and mutual
responsiveness, he can become an architect of building a happy and prosperous
country,” the finance minister added.
He said the curriculum of primary education should be developed to
accommodate these values and training to make it suitable for children.
“To cope with the increasing demand, we will broaden the remit of ongoing
programmes such as proving stipends, distribution of free textbooks and
logistics, school feeding and so on,”
In tandem with this, Muhith said, 7,000 primary schools with separate wash
blocks for boys and girls to ensure better environment for education; 65,000
classrooms, 10,500 teachers’ rooms, boundary walls in 5,000 schools will be
constructed and 30,000 pieces of sports-goods will be distributed.
“As follow up previous programmes, we will establish another 1,000 primary
schools in areas without schools,” Muhith said adding, to ensure the
provision of technology-based modern education system, ICT-based community
learning centre will be set up in all unions and some selected towns.
“We have a plan to set up 64 livelihoods and lifelong learning centres in
64 districts. Aside from the ongoing training for teachers, we have taken
steps to impart English language proficiency training through the British
Council and eliminate the ‘math phobia’ by organising mathematics Olympiad
for students,” the finance minister added.
Merit-based assessment at the secondary level, highest use of technology
in education programmes, promotion of science education, and improvement in
the quality of education are currently getting priority and will continue to
receive such priority in future, Muhith added.
He said, We are creating admission opportunities for around 2,00,000
students in 200 government colleges through a project titled ‘Expansion of
Opportunity for Science Education in Government Colleges’ and for around
3,29,000 students in 323 secondary schools through ‘Development of Government
Secondary School’ project.”
Highlighting different ICT-based initiative, Muhith said classrooms with
multimedia facilities, language cum ICT labs and hostels will be constructed
and furniture and equipment will be supplied under these projects.
Moreover, construction of 46,340 multimedia classrooms and 2,120 smart
classrooms has begun in 26,000 educational institutions at higher secondary,
secondary and madrasa levels, he said.
Piloting of 23 innovative concepts is being carried out to provide
education related services through low cost-time-visit approach, he said
adding, “To ensure confidentiality in making question papers, we are trying
to make a ‘Question Bank’ through integrated efforts of all education
boards.”
Muhith said, “I have already mentioned that around 2 million people are
entering into labour market every year. However, all workers entering into
labour market are not skilled. Therefore, we have to depend on skilled
workers from neighbouring countries.”
On the other hand, he said, Bangladeshi labourers for their skill
deficiency do not get reasonable wages abroad. “Thus flow of remittance is
comparably low in proportion to the number of migrant workers. In fact,
modern and forward looking madrasa education in the long run can play a
catalytic role in gaining employment opportunities in Arab countries
including Middle-East,” Muhith added.
Bearing this in mind, importance has been attached to the extension of
employment-friendly technical and vocational education to generate interest
in this kind of education while modernizing the madrasa education, he added.
While placing the budget in the Parliament, he said, “We have taken
initiatives to set up one technical school and college in each of 100 upazila
and technical training centres in remaining 389 upazilas.”
Alongside, technical and vocational education is popularised by developing
infrastructures of the existing training centres, organising short training,
teachers’ training and stipend programmes, he added.
Besides, steps have been made to establish four women polytechnic
institutes in four divisional headquarters, one girls’ technical school in
each divisional headquarters, polytechnic institutes in 23 districts and one
engineering college in each administrative division, Muhith added.
“In order to modernise madrasa education, we have taken steps to establish
35 model madrasas and multimedia classrooms in 653 madrasas and introduce
honours course in 52 madrasas,” he added.