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Govt okays biggest pry edn overhaul

The six-year Tk 4,933 cr project to end by June 2009

Rejaul Karim Byron
'The government yesterday gave the go-ahead for a massive overhaul of primary education under a six-year project to improve the standards of education and broaden educational service.
"It is the biggest ever programme for primary education to be implemented in phases with government
and donor funds/ Tahmina Hossain, secretary of the Primary and Mass Education Division, told The Daily Star.
The new programme will, strengthen monitoring and decentralise the administrative power in primary education. Besides, officials will get more power to reinforce supervision by providing local and international consultants, said
Tahmina.
The plan, "Primary Education Development Programme", will be implemented at a cost of Tk 4,933 crore - Tk 3,699 crore (equivalent to $639 million) of the amount to be provided by donors.
As many as 35,000 schoolteachers will be appointed, with about 3,500 teachers to be recruited this fiscal under the new project that also aims at poverty alleviation, sources said.
Currently, there are 78,126 government primary schools run by about 3.60 lakh teachers.
Most primary schools are at present running in two shifts and the plan will minimise workload on teachers and reduce schooling to one shift after implementation, said Tahmina.
Besides teacher recruitment, the
government will appoint another 3,500 people as officials under the project that also envisages setting up new school buildings, reconstructing and improving existing schools, supplying free textbooks and training teachers.
The Executive Committee for National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved the project, to be implemented by June 2009, at a meeting with Prime Minister Khaleda Zia in the chair.
The project outlines Tk 662 crore in cost for new teachers, Tk 1,947 crore for infrastructure, Tk 18 crore for transportation, Tk 176 crore for furniture, Tk 33 crore for departmental office decoration and computerisation, Tk 118 crore for consultants and Tk 1,976 crore for other expenditures.
The government will build 30,000 new classrooms, eight lakh benches, 1.65 lakh chairsand 1.12 lakh tables, purchase 63,000 tons of paper to print textbooks and teachers' guides and eight jeeps, eight microbuses and 1,984 motorcycles.
Planning ministry sources said the World Bank will provide $150 million and the Asian Development Bank another $100 million in loans for the 'approach-based' project. The UK's Department for International Development will give a grant of $150 million, the European Union another $100 million, the Netherlands $50 million, Norway $40 million, Sweden $29 million and Canada $20 million.