Adviser to the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Professor Dr Bidhan Ranjan Roy Poddar, stated that flawed primary education affects the overall situation of the country. To develop the nation, primary education must be made dynamic. For this, everyone needs to play their part from their respective positions.
The Adviser came up with the assertion at a view-exchange meeting with the divisional-level officials, organized by the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Sylhet on Sunday.
Emphasizing that primary education is the most essential aspect of education, the Adviser said, humans are the greatest wealth of a nation. However, no real efforts have been made to transform this resource into human assets. If such efforts had been made, primary education would not be in this state.
The meeting was presided over by Additional Divisional Commissioner (General and Revenue) Devjit Singh. Additional Secretary (Budget and Audit) of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, Md. Sakhawat Hossain, and Additional Director General (Additional Secretary) Abu Nur Md. Shamsujjaman attended the meeting as special guests.
In response to journalists’ questions at the meeting, the adviser mentioned that some changes and revisions had been made to the primary level textbooks due to changed circumstances. This has caused some delay in the preparation of the books. However, he expressed hope that all primary textbooks would be distributed to students at the beginning of the year.
Regarding the demand of promoting assistant primary teacher to tenth-grade, the Adviser said that it is not unreasonable, but currently, providing the tenth grade is not practical. The interim government’s current focus is on ensuring the tenth grade for head teachers and creating posts for assistant head teachers. The Ministry of Public Administration has agreed to the creation of 9,572 assistant head teacher posts, where assistant teachers will be promoted to head teachers.
Dr Bidhan further said that if laptops and multimedia projectors are provided to every primary school with the help of new technologies, it may not lead to complete usage across all areas. Therefore, we need to find cost-effective and practical solutions that yield the best results.
Later, the adviser participated in a workshop titled ‘Workshop on Designing for the Next Sector Program PEDP-5’ at a hotel in the city.
