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Editorial

Cent percent literacy for overall development

Long-term intervention required


Bangladeshpost
Published : 18 Feb 2020 05:48 PM | Updated : 01 Sep 2020 04:13 AM

It is good news that the government has embarked on a massive initiative in a bid to achieve 100 percent literacy rate in the country. As reported by this daily on Tuesday, religious affairs ministry has undertaken a Tk 4,556 crore project with an aim to reduce the number of dropouts from the elementary level and thus ensure 100 percent enrolment at primary schools.

 Over the last years, Bangladesh’s literacy rate has increase rapidly keeping the pace with the global rate.  The country’s literacy rate increased after the government took some pragmatic steps in this regard. Reportedly, a preamble on non-formal education development programme is being prepared to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goal-4. The Non-Formal Education Act-2014 has been enacted to facilitate the underprivileged people with education, create alternative opportunity of education to the children dropped out of schools, and check school dropout rate.


Total literacy is the precondition to

 make people skillful human resources 

along with freeing the nation

 from unemployment problem


But the fact remains that, even now, according to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, literacy rates stand at a little under 74% for people above the age of 15, which means a significant portion of the adult population is unable to read and write. Of course we need to focus on the education of our children, but we cannot ignore the fact that a significant portion of our adult population remains illiterate, and we would do well to address this problem post-haste.

Total literacy is the precondition to make people skillful human resources along with freeing the nation from unemployment problem. Observing that there is no alternative to literacy for achieving the expected development goals, it is high time to create more awareness among the people to make the literacy campaign a success. In this regard, primary teachers and social workers can play a vital role in gearing up the literacy campaign throughout the country to achieve the millennium development goals.