Dhaka: State minister for primary and mass-education Mostafizur Rahman Wednesday informed during the parliament session that due to pragmatic steps of the present government, the rate of dropout students in all primary schools has come down to 21.04%.

“Various development activities under the National Plan of Action (NPA), including infrastructural development, proper nursing, yard meeting, mothers’ gathering, providing stipend for the poor students and school feeding programmes’ have been taken to ensure the ‘Education For All’ (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),” he said while answering to a scripted question of treasury bench member Morshed Alam from Noakhali-2 during the question and answer session in the House this evening.

Replying to a question of MA Hannan from Mymensingh, he said the government, as per the Prime Minister’s announcement, meantime nationalized 25,274 primary schools in two phases out of 26,193 non-government primary schools across the country and the rest of the institutions under the phase-3 would come under this category after scrutiny.

Answering a question of treasury bench member Momtaz Begum, the minister said, during the government’ s tenure a total of 94,226 teachers including 68,502 female and 25,724 male were appointed through competitive examinations against created vacant posts of primary schools.

“Some 97.3 percent school-going students have got admitted into schools. In 2014, a total of 33,21,989 children took admission in pre-primary class,” he said in reply to a query of Mahmud Us Samd Chowdhury of Sylhet -3 constituency.

Responding to a question of Md Sohrab Uddin of Kishoreganj-2, the minister said the government has taken a project to establish 12 primary training institutes (PTI) in all 12 districts where there was no PTI earlier.

“Besides, the government has also constructed 19 hostels for primacy schools at three remote and hilly districts—Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarbans,” he mentioned.