DHAKA; Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday stressed

the need for making education programmes time-befitting, keeping pace with
global educational advancement as she witnessed a power point presentation of
the draft outline of the national education framework.

“The world is progressing ahead. Science and technology are also
advancing. We have to keep pace with the advancement. So, it is solely
necessary to make the education programmes time-befitting,” she told a
function at her official Ganabhaban residence here.

The Prime Minister said the new outline will be formulated on the basis of
the existing education policy.

In this regard, she asked all concerned to keep in mind that Bangladesh
will always have to move forward keeping pace with the world trend.

She added: “When the world advances towards science and technology, we
don’t have any way to lag behind.”

The Prime Minister hoped that the education activities would help make the
students and teachers more attentive as the education involving lives and
livelihoods have got priorities in the programmes.
The Prime Minister said the government had not been able to open the
educational institutions for the last one and a half years because of the
outbreak of the Coronavirus, although they carried out classes through online
and television taking advantage of the digital Bangladesh.

“But, the children have been deprived of the joy of going to schools and
colleges,” she continued.

The Premier, however, praised the authorities concerned to keep continuing
the educational activities during the pandemic despite the fact that
everything has been standstill due to the spread of the lethal virus.

She said that the schools and colleges were reopened on September 12
(Sunday) while other educational institutes will also be opened gradually,
hence the educational activities will start functioning freshly through it.

The Prime Minister mentioned that her government has taken various
initiatives steps including setting up 12 science and technology universities
to inspire students to study science, saying, “The students of our country
had no interest in science.”

She said that they didn’t even want to choose the science group and that’s
why people from the science departments were hardly found. The Prime Minister
said her government has been doing everything possible to reach education to
the doorsteps of all countrymen, adding that they have set up new educational
institutes at the places which had no institutes.

Sheikh Hasina said that they have attached topmost priority to education
following the footsteps of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur
Rahman.

Her government has formulated an education policy based upon the Qudrat-e-
Khuda Education Commission Report, formulated by the Father of the Nation,
and nationalized each school and colleges in every upazila across the country
following footprints of Bangabandhu as he nationalized primary schools across
the country after the Liberation War.