Prime Minister Khaleda Zia yesterday renewed her call to all, irrespective of party and opinion, to work together for spreading education and maintain its quality.

"There may be differences of opinion on many issues, but there should not be any difference of opinion when it comes to education. Let's put education above all and keep contributing towards building a knowledge-based society," Khaleda told a function marking the International Literacy Day 2005 at the osmani Memorial auditorium.

Recalling her similar call she made on this day in 2002, Khaleda expressed her happiness as the people came up with a positive response to improve the standard of education, aiming to build up a well-educated society.

She said the rate of enrollment in schools has increased while the trend of 'dropout' has almost disappeared following contributions of teachers and government officials concerned as well as non-government institutions and various organisations in spreading education.

Referring to successes in this sector, she said gender parity has been achieved in admission to school and in some cases girls have outnumbered boys.

'A revolutionary progress has been achieved in female education,' she said

adding, that such successes have been acclaimed in many international reports and various regional and international forums.

Referring to her government's priority to education and highest allocation for the sector, she assured that they would keep up the practice in the future too.

'To us, education and development is synonymous,' she said.

Ministers, development partners, academicians and representatives of

various organisations attended the function.

She said a programme titled "Hard to Reach," has been introduced for urban underprivileged working children and juveniles and Tk 400 crore "Reaching out to School Children" project being implemented to bring the dropped out poor children back to school.

Khaleda said her government is increasing allocation for education every year and Tk 9, 686 crore has been

allocated for the education and technology sectors this year, up Tk 1,827 crore than the previous year.

Finance Minister M Saifur Rahman, PM's Advsior to Primary and Mass Education Ministry Prof Jahanara Begum and Unesco Country Representative Wolfgang Vollmann also addressed the function.

Primary and Mass Education Ministry organised the function.