'Bangladesh has highest pry enrollment in dev countries'

They said learning environment must be interesting for children and in no way it will be a place of intimidation.

The seminar was organised by the United Nations Children Fund (Unicef) in collaboration with the government to mark the completion of a project titled 'Intensive District Approach to Education for All', a project that was taken up under the Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP).

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"Primary education is perhaps the first formal gateway for a child to the world outside his/her family and it plays a crucial role to the child's physical and mental development," said Australian High Commissioner Lorraine Barker.

In a written speech, she said Bangladesh has one of the largest primary education systems in the world with over 18 million children eligible to attend primary schools.

The country has an enrollment rate of 81 percent, one of the highest primary school network among the developing countries, she said, adding that it has also achieved a gender parity with 49 percent of girl enrollment and 51 percent boy enrollment.

The government of Japan contributed US$ 1.99 million and other inputs to the project attaching due importance to the indispensability of quality education for a bright future of any society, said Japanese Ambassador Matsushiro Horigushi.

Safe learning environment was developed under the project to address health, hygiene and other issues related to primary education, said Unicef's Chief of Child Development and Education Section James Jennings.

Teachers were motivated to take responsibility for children's learning, he added.

"Access to education is a basic human right directly related to social and economic development," said Swedish Ambassador to Bangladesh Borje Mattson.

But mere access is not sufficient, Mattson said, adding that efforts must be made to address the issues of quality education and project benefits for both the parents and children.

Bangladesh government has been making untiring efforts to live up to its commitment to the Dakar Conference, Millenium Development Goals and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper to achieve the goal of quality education for all, said acting Primary and Mass Education Secretary Md Rafiqul Islam.

The government efforts have resulted in achieving 106 percent gross enrollment rate, 82 percent net enrollment rate and 67 percent completion rate of five-year primary education, he added.

The IDAEA was one of the 17 projects that Bangladesh undertook under the PEDP in cooperation with the development partners since 1990 when the country became a party to the Education for All adopted in the World Conference on Education.

During the project period (1996-2004), a total of 39,704 primary schools were covered in 38 districts.

Over 1.5 lakh primary teachers were trained in interactive teaching methods and a total of 10.3 million children benefited from the project.

The second phase of the project is going to begin soon to continue the success of the first project.

In addition to the Unicef funding, the governments of Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Japan and Sweden, and the Asian Development Bank and World Bank contributed to the project fund of US$ 37.5 million, according to the project sources.

Qaiser M Khan of the World Bank, Unicef representative Morten Giersing, Director General of Primary Education ABM Abdus Sattar and IDAEA Project Director Ratan Kumar Roy also spoke on the occasion.