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Editorial

Laudable progress achieved in literacy

We still have miles to go


Bangladeshpost
Published : 07 Sep 2020 08:43 PM | Updated : 08 Sep 2020 12:22 AM

Today is International Literacy Day. The day is celebrated annually on September 8 across the world including Bangladesh to highlight the importance of literacy or the ability to read and write for individuals, communities and societies.

Today, as the world marks International Literacy Day, it is worth pondering why mankind is not even near the underpinning requirement of universal literacy. However, against this backdrop, it is good to note that literacy rate is increasing rapidly in Bangladesh. 

As reported by this daily on Monday, the literacy rate in Bangladesh has risen remarkably in the past decade to an all-time high of 74.7 percent. 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.  

The government has been implementing a number of projects to increase the country's literacy rate. For instance – they are implementing the Basic Literacy Project at 250 selected upazilas in 64 districts across the country to impart literacy knowledge to 4,500,000 illiterate people aged between 15 and 45 years.


All government and non-government organisations 

should scale up efforts and work together to free 

the country from illiteracy


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. 

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.

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.