THE National Curriculum and Textbook Board, meant to provide about 40 million students with textbooks on January 1, when the academic year begins, could print about 410.5 million copies of textbooks for the current academic year and complete the distribution by March, three months after classes began. The failure earned the board criticism. The board could run into a similar proposition in the next academic year as the government in August cancelled the tender for the printing of 126.1 million textbooks for Class VI鈥揤III without showing any reason. The board began working on a re-tender for the printing job in the past week. The board earlier had a target to complete the printing of books by November. But, it has now set a new deadline of December 15 to complete the printing of all textbooks. In such a situation, whilst the Secondary and Higher Education Division secretary is optimistic and the textbook board chair is confident about the distribution of textbooks to all students on January 1, there are fears that this could be hope against hope unless the authorities keep a close watch on the printing of textbooks.
The government this time has planned to print about 300.2 million copies of textbooks, about 100 million fewer than what was distributed in the current academic year, uncertainty remains about the distribution finally happening at the beginning of the academic year. And, the government needs to tie any loose ends that may crop up in the process. It usually takes five months to complete the whole process of the printing of textbooks from the time the job is put to tender. A senior board official says that it takes 28 days to complete the contract and the board would try to cut down the time by a week. It takes around 190 days, or more than six months, to evaluate the tender and the board would try to reduce the time by three to four days. This way, he says, the board would try to meet the target of December 15 to complete the printing of all textbooks. Yet, the process does not seem to be convincing enough. Whilst the planning goes on, calling out the government on trying to meet the target, what evidently comes up is that the government has failed to learn from the mistakes it made in 2024 regarding the printing of textbooks when the complete distribution of textbooks was delayed by three months because of the delay in printing.
The government should, therefore, put in additional efforts to meet the target of textbook distribution at the beginning of the next academic year. And, it needs to consider the split of the National Curriculum and Textbook Board into two entities for the academic part under one and the practical under another for a lasting solution.
