Mid-day meals to be introduced at primary schools in October, says advisor

The government will introduce a mid-day meal programme in primary schools across 150 Upazilas beginning in October, according to Primary Education Advisor Bidhan Ranjan Roy Podder.

He made the announcement at a press conference at the Secretariat to mark International Literacy Day on Sunday.

Asked about the status of the initiative, Bidhan Ranjan said, “The work on mid-day meals is progressing. It will be launched in 150 Upazilas soon.”

Explaining the delay, he said the Development Project Proposal (DPP) was initially prepared using data from a previous Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) report. 

“Then, following the process, we presented it to ECNEC, and then the new BBS statistics came out,” he said. 

“The areas that are poorer in a district have changed. We had to revise it again and get it passed. That is why there was some delay.”

The advisor added, “And the procurement process, the training issues, are ongoing. We hope we can complete them.”

Asked when the programme would begin, he said, “We hope to be able to start mid-day meals in 150 primary schools in the country by the beginning of October.”

The meal will include five food items including eggs, seasonal fruits, biscuits and milk, Bidhan Ranjan said.

He also said that primary school holidays would be reduced in order to improve the quality of education and strengthen literacy. 

“We are trying to reduce the holidays to some extent. We want to do this work in coordination with the Ministry of Education because it cannot be done separately,” he said.

In response to a question about whether the weekly holiday would be cut from two days to one, he said, “For now, the target is to reduce the holidays in the calendar by a bit. If we want to reduce the weekly holiday from two days to one day, it is difficult to do it separately in primary schools since all types of educational institutions are the same. In the case of the holidays that are on the calendar, we will reduce them a little.”

“The main task of the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education is literacy,” the advisor continued. 

“If education has to be in school, then a necessary condition is contract hours - how much time a teacher can give to the student. These contract hours first of all depend on how many days the school is open. You look at the calendar — my school is open for 180 days out of 365 days. How can education happen if the schools are only open for so few days? This means we have a lot of unnecessary holidays left.”

Citing BBS data, he noted that the literacy rate among people aged seven and older is now 77.9 percent, according to the Bangladesh Economic Survey 2024. 

That leaves 22.1 percent of the population still illiterate, either never having enrolled in school or having dropped out at the primary level.