Rural students to get 1.50 lakh learning materials

The government will start distributing some 1.50 lakh printed learning materials among the students of pre-primary to Grade 5 in the country’s underprivileged remote areas from December in a bid to fill the educational gap created by the Covid-19 pandemic over the past two years.

The initiative is a part of efforts to reach the target of primary education under the Bangladesh Covid-19 School Sector Response (CSSR) Project, said Project Director Md Nurul Amin Chowdhary on Wednesday.

He was addressing an event — titled Progress Sharing of CSSR Project and Inauguration Ceremony of Printed Learning Packages — organised at the Primary Teachers’ Training Institute in Dhaka.

Under this project, health protection materials have been provided to some 20,000 remote schools while a total number of 2,000 government primary school teachers in 50 batches were provided three-day training on Formative and Summative Assessment and day-long training on Mental Health Tools.

Under the project, a total number of 2,094 scripts for TV content and 510 for radio content have been developed till November 15. At the same time, materials for the content intended for TV are being recorded in different studios. Besides, broadcasting of TV content through Bangladesh Sangsad Television has been started since November 5.

Calling the project revolutionary, Nurul said it will help students greatly with digital learning. Five Dhaka schools have already received the printed learning materials. The rest of the materials will be distributed in December. Inaugurating the programme, Primary and Mass Education Secretary Farid Ahmed said, “The government is focusing on a new primary education system that will help students learn with joy, respect their teachers and love their schools.”

He said, “From 2023, pre-primary will be two years. There will be no burden of books. Teachers are being trained for that too. This project will help achieve the goal of primary education, and ultimately contribute to making the students world-class citizens.”

Keiko Inoue, the World Bank’s South Asia Practice Manager for Education, said Bangladesh has been given the largest allocation — $1.8 billion — from the World Bank in the education sector in Asia.

She hoped the CSSR Project will properly address the educational deficiency that has been created by the pandemic. Deepa Sankar, chief of education at UNICEF Bangladesh, Professor Dr Prabir Kumar Bhattacharjee, director (training) at the Secondary and Higher Education Directorate, and Syed Mamunul Alam, additional director general at Primary Education Directorate, also addressed the event, among others.

The Tk 128-crore project was taken in 2020 to tackle the educational gap with the help of UNICEF when schools were closed amid the pandemic. Since then, different subjective content has been created with the help of teachers and aired on BTV and Bangladesh Betar under the project.