The government has decided to withdraw age-wold exam system from the pre-primary schools of the country to relieve the immense stress on children. As per the decision, in the government primary schools, there will no longer be annual examinations for grades 1 to 3, much to the relief of guardians as well as authorities.
The students will instead be evaluated according to their performance in class tests. The pilot programme will initially start in the 100 schools across the country from next year. Primary and Mass Education secretaryMdAkram-al-Hossain made the announcement at a press conference held at the ministry to mark the International Literacy Day.
The Secretary said that they took the decision in order to reduce pressure on students. But yearly exams will be held for students of grades 4 and above. After the pilot programme ends, the yearly exams will be revoked in 65 thousand schools in 2021. A new curriculum will be introduced starting from 2021 as well.
He further said that there are too many kindergartens in the country. These institutions have been marked and the government is trying to bring them under the current jurisdiction of law by making a list. Some 8 task-force teams are currently working on that. The kindergartens, which will be registered, will be introduced to the new curriculum. Strict legal action will be taken against those institutions, which will fail to register themselves.
State Minister for Primary and Mass Education, Md Zakir Hossain expressed his dissatisfaction as the rate of literacy has only gone up by 1 per cent in the last year. The current literacy rate is 73.9 percent whileit was 72.9 percent in 2018. At a press conference organized on the occasion of the International Literacy Day, he said that the International Literacy Day will be observed across the country today.
The theme of this year is multilingual literacy and ensuring a better quality of life. He said he is hopeful that the country will achieve significant progress this year. A literacy programme was launched for 45 lakh illiterate people from the ages of 15 to 45 hailing from 250 selected upazilas in the 64 districts of the country. Some 23,59,441 individuals from 138 upazilas have become literate so far.
Even today, many children do not attend school due to poverty, backwardness, child labour and geographical barriers. To ensure the basic education for them, an initiative has been taken to impart informal education to one lakh children outside school from the ages of 8 to 14 years under the sub-component of PEDP-4.