Karachi, 04 January 2023:

Bangladesh Deputy High Commission in Karachi, arranged an image building and branding Bangladesh program titled: “Free Textbooks Distribution – A Success Story of Bangladesh” at the Chancery Conference Hall on 04 January 2023.

Deputy High Commissioner briefed that the government of Bangladesh has been distributing free textbooks for pre-primary to secondary level students since 2010 and celebrates a nation-wide ‘Book Festival’ / “National Textbook Festival” on 1^st January each year, the first day of the academic year for primary and secondary level in Bangladesh. The Government has distributed around 35 million copies of textbooks in 2023 among around 42 million students in pre-primary, primary, secondary, ebtedayee, dakhil, vocational, SSC vocational, ethnic minority groups and visually challenged students across the country. The Ethnic minority children in the greater hilly districts are also receiving the free new text books in their mother tongues. Since 2017, the government has been distributing books in Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Garo and Sadri languages to the children of minority ethnic groups to study  in their mother tongue. Therefore, the distribution of free textbooks program is inclusive and holistic across the country.

Deputy High Commissioner further added that since the start of distributing free textbooks in 2010 academic year, the Government has so far distributed a total of around 435 crore copies of free textbooks. He attributed that the distribution of free text books in such a massive scale on the very first day of the academic year in Bangladesh is a unique and a rare program in education across the globe.  

Deputy High Commission mentioned that the literacy rate in Bangladesh was only 18% in 1971 and that was only below 50% even in 2002, which is currently around 80%. Currently the primary enrollment in Bangladesh is around 99%. Deputy High Commissioner commented that along with other programs such as scholarships to over 15 million children and lunch at school and food for education programs, the distribution of free text books immensely contributed in such achievements. These programs also contributed to increase educational participation—enrollment, attendance, persistence, and performance—of primary-school-age children from poor families in urban and rural areas. He further added that this initiative had reduced the rate of school dropouts and increased the number of students at primary and secondary levels. The initiative of free textbook distribution is a ‘milestone’ in the education sector in Bangladesh as it encourages students to continue their studies.

The participants at the image building program and branding Bangladesh titled: “Free Textbooks Distribution – A Success Story of Bangladesh” were impressed to know the policy initiative and the success story of Bangladesh in education. Deputy High Commissioner expressed his optimism that the success in education would contribute to Bangladesh’s transformative development and one day Bangladesh will be a country with 100% literacy rate. He also shared the vision that the present government of Bangladesh has been striving hard to turn Bangladesh into a knowledge-based, technologically-sound, developed country and Smart Bangladesh by 2041—the Golden Bengal as was dreamed by the Father of the Nation of Bangladesh.