The functional literacy rate (7+above years) in Bangladesh is now 62.92 per cent whereas the general literacy rate in the country is 74.23 per cent . The functional literacy rate among people aged between 11-45 years in the country is however, 73.69 per cent in 2023 which was 53.70 per cent in 2011. Such functional literacy rate among the population aged between 7-14 years is now 72.97 per cent which is, however, 60.77 per cent among population aged 15 years and above.
Over the last years, Bangladesh’s literacy rate has increased rapidly keeping the pace with the global rate. The country’s literacy rate has increased as the government took some pragmatic steps to address dropout problem and accrue the scope of learning. Now it is time for the government to look forward to attaining cent percent literacy.
All government and non-
government organisations
should scale up strategic
efforts and work together
to free the country from
illiteracy
Total literacy is the precondition to make people skilful human resources along with freeing the nation from unemployment problem. Taking the fact that there is no alternative to literacy for achieving the expected development goals into account, it is time to create more awareness among the people to make government's literacy campaign a success. In this regard, primary school teachers, social workers and media should play an instrumental role in gearing up the literacy campaign throughout the country to achieve cent percent literacy.
The government has been implementing a number of projects to increase the country's literacy rate. The Non-Formal Education Act-2014 has been enacted as well to facilitate the underprivileged people with education, create alternative opportunity of education to the children dropped out of schools and check school dropout rate. Also, a preamble on non-formal education development programme is being prepared to achieve the targets of Sustainable Development Goal-4.
Eradication of illiteracy is a continuous process. There is no denying that the government has made some commendable progress, but still a lot more needs to be done. Unfortunately, all our neighbouring countries have a higher literacy rate than ours. Among the South Asian nations, only Afghanistan and Pakistan are behind us in terms of literacy rate. Therefore, all government and non-government organisations should scale up strategic efforts and work together to free the country from illiteracy.
