Prime minister Tarique Rahman has said that, for the first time in the country’s history, education has received its highest budget allocation. The government plans to raise spending on education gradually to 5 per cent of GDP within the next five years.
The government is implementing the 31-point programme it put to the people before the national election on February 12 this year, he said.
The prime minister made the remarks on Thursday in Bangladesh’s address, delivered in Bengali, to the general debate of the 81st session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in New York.
“The government of Bangladesh has given special importance to education, health and sport,” he said. “The curriculum has been designed with an emphasis on technical and practical education to ensure a job-oriented education system of high ethical standards.”
“Primary school pupils from class one are being given bags, school uniforms and free lunches,” he added. “The government hopes this will raise school attendance and the quality of education.”
To establish sport as a profession, sport has been included as a subject in the syllabus for the first time, the prime minister said. As part of this, more than 2 million pupils took part in a month-long nationwide football tournament for schoolchildren in June.
He noted that at least 73 per cent of the activities in the government’s 31-point programme are directly, and 27 per cent indirectly, aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals’ principle of “leave no one behind”.
Through these programmes, the government hopes to close the development gap between cities and villages and to advance accountable, inclusive and sustainable development across every area of the 2030 Agenda, the prime minister said.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report