Education is the basic need for socio-economic transformation and advancement of a country. It is the prime ingredient of human resource development. In Bangladesh educational development was not adequately geared to meet this human need. The gap of literacy rates between the urban and rural areas is very wide - 36.6 per cent in rural and 63.0 per cent in urban areas. As a step towards increasing the literacy rate, universal primary education has been made compulsory.
Education plays the most important role for creating trained workforce for a nation.
The educated and trained workforce can easily acquire new information and technology and apply them in new situations. In this respect, the contents of education in Bangladesh need some modifications in the context of present day situation taking cognisance of rapidly changing stock of knowledge, particularly in the field of science and technology. More emphasis on scientific and technical education as has been the case during the recent years, will go a long way in enlarging the technological base of economic development and laying foundation of a knowledge based society. The original Plan allocation for primary education was Tk.14,281.68 million. The allocation, however, was increased to Tk.24,216.48 million through ADPs and the actual expenditure was Tk.20,307.40 million.