Many children, especially from marginalised groups of people, are still illiterate in the country amid a lack of effective government initiatives to keep them in school.
This cast doubt on the government鈥檚 plan to end illiteracy by 2030 under the United Nations鈥� Sustainable Development Goals programme after it missed the goal in 2014.
Educationists and researchers mostly blame poverty, the root cause of child labour and early marriages, for the situation.
They suggested creating scopes for quality education, using learning as a life skil l, and specific projects for targeted disadvantaged groups to overcome the situation.
Against this backdrop, Bangladesh will observe International Literacy Day today with other countries with the theme of promoting literacy for a world in transition: Building the foundation for sustainable and peaceful societies.
Ahead of the day, state minister for primary and mass education Md Zakir Hossain said on Thursday at a press conference that the literacy rate in Bangladesh was 76.8 per cent among the population aged seven and above, citing Bangladesh Sample Vital Statistics 2022.
鈥楽till, 23.8 per cent of people in the country are illiterate. Without turning them literate, the expected development of the country is not possible,鈥� he added.
According to the Literacy Assessment Survey 2023, carried out by the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, functional literacy among people aged over seven is, however, 62.92 per cent.
BBS carried out the LAS 2023 to monitor the progress made under the Sustainable Development Goals Project and published the results on July 18.
The survey showed that the functional literacy rate among the population aged between 7 and 14 years is 72.97 per cent鈥�76.42 per cent among females and 69.67 per cent among males.
Among this age group, 14.54 per cent are illiterate, 12.49 per cent are semi-literate, 20.79 per cent are literate at the initial level, and 52.18 per cent are literate at the advanced level.
The survey considered those literate at an advanced level who showed the ability to read and write fluently, competency in the four arithmetic rules, and the ability to use the skills in everyday life.
Qazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman of the Palli Karma-Sahayak Foundation, observed that many primary-level students were still dropping out due to poverty.
鈥楾he government should prevent this dropout at the primary level,鈥� he said.
The government needs to monitor all schools strictly to prevent dropouts and provide quality education, Kholiquzzaman, also co-chairperson of the 2010 Education Policy Formulation Committee, added.
In its 2008 election manifesto, the ruling Awami League pledged to eradicate illiteracy by 2014.
On Thursday, the state minister for primary and mass education said that they were trying to form a smart Bangladesh based on 100 per cent literacy by 2041.
The Annual Primary School Census 2022, conducted by the primary and mass education ministry, showed that the net enrolment rate at the primary level is 97.56 per cent while the primary cycle dropout rate is 13.95 per cent.
KM Enamul Hoque, capacity support and advocacy adviser of the Asia-South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education, said that in most cases, the children of marginal groups drop out of primary school because of child labour and marriages.
He also said the literacy rate among marginalised people is low due to economic poverty, climate change-related vulnerability, displacement due to natural calamities, and living in hard-to-reach areas.
The Bureau of Non-Formal Education under the primary and mass education ministry is now carrying out a project titled 鈥極ut of School Children Pilot Programme鈥� after it completed the Basic Literacy Project in June 2022.
Enamul observed that these projects were not playing any effective role in improving literacy and urged the government to take specific projects for marginalised people, people living in slums and industrial areas, and an overall project for preventing dropouts and improving literacy.
鈥業t鈥檚 the responsibility of the state to ensure literacy for all,鈥� he said.
Professor M Tariq Ahsan of the Institute of Education and Research under Dhaka University observed that schools becoming stricter with scholarship examinations was another reason for dropouts from IV and V.
鈥楳any students also don鈥檛 want to continue after the primary level due to no relevance of their schooling skills in the workplace,鈥� he said.
Between 2010 and 2022, the government ran a school feeding programme, benefiting nearly 30 lakh children at 15,788 government primary schools under a pilot project involving Tk 474 crore.
In 2019, the government decided to provide midday meals to students at all government primary schools by 2023.
In July, the Bangladesh government signed an agreement with the World Food Programme for expanding and improving the school feeding programme for the country鈥檚 primary school students.
Primary and mass education ministry secretary Farid Ahmed told 抖阴精品 on Thursday that the government would resume the midday meal school programme only in 150 upazilas, targeting 37 lakh by 2023.
鈥榃e are also working to make our pre-primary programmes attractive to prevent dropouts,鈥� he said.