The ‘National Textbook Festival’ has been celebrated across Bangladesh with 42 million schoolgoers receiving new textbooks on the first day of the New Year.
This year, over 353 million copies of textbooks were distributed among students of pre-primary, primary, Ebtedayee, secondary, Dakhil and vocational institutions for the 2020 academic year.
On the last day of 2018, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina formally inaugurated the textbook distribution at her official residence Ganabhaban in Dhaka stressing a modern technology-based education for the students.
“We want to give the students education in a modern way as part of our efforts to give them a modern technology-based education as they can move with the changing pace of the era,” she said.
On Wednesday (Jan 1), elaborated events were chalked out to celebrate the festival with two main events were held on the Dhaka University's central playground and at Adhar Chandra Government High School in Savar, in the outskirts of the capital.
Addressing the Savar event, Education Minister Dipu Moni urged teachers and parents to teach the children with fun.
In capital Dhaka, State Minister for Primary and Primary and Mass Education Md Zakir Hossen inaugurated the textbook festival at the DU premises.
Along with the guardians, students from schools across Dhaka participated in the event, joined by cricketing star Shakib Al Hasan.
"Today seems a celebration of the Independence," said Halima Akater, a student of the capital's Mokim Bazar Government Primary School.
This year, as many 105,402,375 textbooks were distributed among the pre-primary and primary level students while 247,742,179 textbooks to secondary level students.
Between 2010 and 2019, the government has distributed nearly 2.97 billion free textbooks to schoolgoers across Bangladesh.

PHOTO: Sazzad Hossain