He was speaking at a workshop on 'Progress and achievement of second primary education development programme' at DPE conference hall in the city.

"The dropout rate at the primary level was 48 percent in 2005 and 33 percent in 2001," said Asaduzzaman.

But he could not provide the present dropout because the survey of DPE is yet to be finished. He hoped that DPE will be able to reveal the result within two months.

Education Adviser Ayub Quadri admitted that the dropout rate is still alarming although the government became successful in other fields of primary education, specially in increasing the ratio of students and teachers and number of educational institutes and infrastructure development of the schools.

"Ministry of Primary and Mass Education and DPE have taken the issue seriously and we will try to reduce the dropout rate through PEDP-II," he said while addressing the workshop as the chief guest.

DPE Director Ratan Kumar Roy said primary data have been collected from government primary, non-government primary, registered primary and community primary schools to determine the dropout rate.

Hua Du, country director of Asian Development Bank, said regular evaluation of student achievements is required to ensure quality education at primary level.

M Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan, secretary to the Ministry of Primary and Mass Education, said reduction of dropout rate and quality education are yet to be ensured though government has taken several programmes targeting the access of primary education for all children.

Prof Abdullah Abu Sayeed, founder of Bishwa Sahitya Kendra, said worse textbooks and low quality teachers are the main obstacles in the way of providing a better primary education.

Chowdhury Mufad Ahmed, joint programme director of PEDP-II, presented the keynote paper on PEDP at the workshop where academicians and representatives from different NGOs also took part.