State Minister for Primary and Mass Education Zakir Hossain has said English medium schools will be introduced one each in 64 government district primary schools.
For this, two separate English teachers will be appointed in the selected schools. A total of 1.30 lakh teachers of government primary schools in the country will be made master trainers in English.
Zakir Hossain made the disclosure at the inaugural ceremony of the teachers’ training programme at Hotel Intercontinental in the capital on Sunday morning. Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni attended the event as the chief guest.
The State Minister said, “The quality of teaching in primary schools has increased substantially. By using this improvement, we want to make the students more proficient in English. That is why we are going to take this initiative. One thousand primary teachers in collaboration with the British Council will be given special training in English through 9 Primary Training Institutes (PTIs). A total of 1.30 lakh more teachers will be trained on English in phases at a cost of Tk 46 crore. Later, they will train other teachers to continue the English medium education in primary schools across the country.”
Zakir Hossain also said, “Initially a pilot project is going to start soon in a primary school in the capital. Then the summary will be sent to the Prime Minister. We will start it after getting the approval of the Prime Minister.”
The education minister said, “Weaknesses were observed among four crore students who studied English for 12 years. As a result, their learning process is not bringing positive outcome for long. The training of British Council will play a positive role in this regard.”
She expressed her optimism that the primary school teachers will be skilled in English language through master trainers of the British Council.
Golam Hasibul Alam, Secretary of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education presided over the function. Among others Director General of the Department of Primary Education Alamgir Muhammad Mansur Alam, senior officials of the British Council and the British High Commission were also present there.
