A quarter of youths without education
A news item referring to a UNESCO report published in this daily recently says that Bangladesh has over eight million young people aged between 15 and 24 years. They never completed primary school and we are among the top five worst nations in this regard in the world. In addition, the GMR put the figure of illiterate adults in the world at 775 million. Of them, Bangladesh alone has 44 million, the fourth highest in the world. How can we think of our national progress keeping a quarter of the young people almost uneducated? The government should find out ways of solving this problem.
Anyway, it is said that poverty and lack of interest in studies are responsible for around 40 percent dropout at the primary level. This percentage can be reduced by making lessons attractive to the students. So the curricula should be updated. And teachers' role is very important in making the lessons attractive. So, teachers should be given proper training to take classes in an interesting way.
However, there is an encouraging piece of information in the study that Bangladesh is one of the only three low income countries where more girls are attending secondary schools than boys. Of course, this is a good achievement and this is largely due to the measures taken by the government to support girls' enrolment. So, why do the authorities not take up similar schemes to enable more boys obtain secondary education?
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