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Students across the country started a new academic year with brand-new textbooks distributed to mark the “textbook festival”, after a two-year break in the event brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Free textbooks were handed over to the pre-primary, primary and secondary level students for the academic year 2023 on Sunday– the first day of the academic year– through festive events at educational institutions across the country.
Disregarding the cold weather in the morning, students attended their respective educational institutes with enthusiasm to receive the new books and enjoy the unique smell of freshly-printed pages.
According to Ministry of Education data, the government is set to distribute 33.91 crore textbooks to more than 4.9 crore pre-primary, primary, and secondary level students.
About 2.19 crore primary-level students will receive 9.66 crore textbooks, and 1.89 crore secondary-level students will receive 24.24 crore textbooks.
The central book festival for primary-level students was held at the Central Playground of the University of Dhaka, where the new books were handed over to 3,000 students from 34 primary schools in the capital.
Happy faces were seen in abundance at the event, as students from various schools in the capital gathered to collect their new books.
Habiba Aktar, a fifth grader at Banianagar Govt Primary School, said, “I am feeling great about receiving new books, and I also got to see some of my friends at the festival.
“I have come to the book festival with my parents, and I am very happy. Look at all the new books I got!”
Kamal Hossain, the father of a fifth-grader, was seen looking at the colourful pages of the new textbooks of his son. He said, “No one can truly understand a student’s joy when they receive their books on the first day of the New Year.”
Addressing the event, State Minister for Primary and Mass Education Ministry Md Zakir Hossain said the children will build a brighter Bangladesh with the motivation of how the new books make children happy, energised and inspired.
“Under the guidance of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, 100 per cent of the new textbooks have been provided free of cost to primary level students since the academic year 2010,” he said.
