No book festival again this year: Primary and Mass Education adviser

Primary and Mass Education Adviser Professor Dr Bidhan Ranjan Roy Poddar has said students will receive all textbooks at the beginning of January as usual, but there will be no book festival or ceremonial distribution. Books will be delivered directly to every school.

He made the remarks to reporters on Saturday (6 December) after a stakeholders’ meeting on improving primary education quality at the Cox’s Bazar Cultural Centre.

Professor Dr Bidhan Ranjan Roy Poddar further said printing of the new primary-level textbooks is almost complete and most books have already reached district level.

He emphasised that the purpose of education is far greater than merely achieving GPA-5 or good results, which is only a small part of it. The real objective is to nurture children’s latent talents and develop them into complete human beings.

Secretary of the Primary and Mass Education Ministry Abu Taher Md Masud Rana, Director General of the Directorate of Primary Education Abu Noor Md Shamsuzzaman and Director Mohammad Kamrul Hasan spoke as special guests at the meeting.

Chattogram Divisional Deputy Director of Primary Education Ataur Rahman delivered the welcome address at the programme chaired by Cox’s Bazar Deputy Commissioner Md A Mannan.

For context, the decision to provide free textbooks from pre-primary to Class Nine was taken in 2009. The first book festival was held on 1 January 2010 by the then government. For the next 15 consecutive years, textbooks were handed over to students through festivals on the first day of the year.

However, after the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August 2024, the decade-and-a-half tradition was changed. To avoid “unnecessary expenditure”, the interim government scrapped the grand book festival in 2025. Following the same policy, the government will not hold any festival for book distribution in 2026 either.