Primary and secondary school students are getting free textbooks as gifts on the first day of the new year after overcoming all doubts in the epidemic. The distribution of textbooks has started in every school-madrasa of the country on Friday morning.
Four and a half crore children will be handed over the new textbooks step by step. In the case of primary students, parents and in the case of secondary students, they are going to school after wearing masks and receiving books. Such a picture has been seen in several schools of the capital. Due to the cancellation of 'Textbook Festival' due to Corona, books are being distributed in a different way this time. That is why the traditional crowd of children and teenagers is not present in the school grounds. There are no local people's representatives and academics. Teachers are distributing books.
Three days will be allotted for the distribution of books for each class of secondary. Textbooks should be distributed in four classes from 6th to 9th, three days a week for a total of 12 days. Ninth grade books will be distributed in the first three days. After that, eighth grade, seventh grade and sixth grade books will be given step by step. And the books will be handed over to the parents thinking about the hygiene of the primary students. However, if the children come, they will not be returned. Every year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the book festival by handing over new books to the students at Ganobhaban. But on Thursday, the Prime Minister inaugurated the book festival at the Bangabandhu International Conference Center in the capital by virtually joining Ganobhaban.
Education Minister was present at the time. Dipu Moni, State Minister for Primary and Mass Education Zakir Hossain and Deputy Minister for Education Mahibul Hasan Chowdhury. Last year, a company called Agrani Printers went beyond the conventional syndicate to print high school textbooks at a much lower price. The same institution now adopts the same policy in printing textbooks from first to ninth class. Instead of joining the syndicate, they keep the price of the currency in line with the price of paper in the market. This forced other companies to pay lower prices for printing.
This has saved the government about Tk 300 crore this year. After the commencement of printing, the price of paper has gone up and the printers are in dire straits. In addition, Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and various selected pictures on the War of Independence and Liberation have been added to the cover of the secondary level textbook. Although it takes a little longer, all the organizations finish the work in advance and the books reach the field. As a result, all the organizations face competition to finish the work quickly.
In this process, the work of printing textbooks progressed quickly. NCTB officials said that there was a fear that the book might be printed on low quality paper as the price of book printing was low this time. But due to the strict supervision of the NCTB and the surveillance of the media, everyone is forced to give quality books in the end. In the 2021 academic year, 34 crore 36 lakh 62 thousand 412 free books are being given to four crore 16 lakh 55 thousand 226 students from pre-primary to secondary level.
Of these, 10 crore 25 lakh 82 thousand 555 books are being given to two crore 30 lakh 79 thousand 773 students at pre-primary and primary level and one crore 85 lakh 75 thousand 453 students are being given 24 crore 10 lakh 79 thousand 857 books at ibtedai, Dakhil, technical and secondary level. .
