Endless complaints are made regarding the lack of textbooks for the new academic session. The responsible body of the government is requesting details for the number of lacking textbooks in each school of each district.
It was arranged that the textbooks will be provided for free at the school level, as per the arrangement books for Classes 1 to 3 were to be published by a Private Printing Business and the books for Classes 4 to 10 were to be published by Janak Shikshya Samagri.
The issue of books not reaching students is continuously being raised in the Parliament and in the media. The Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and Janak Shikshya Samagri have been saying that even the number of published books hasn’t reached the designated schools.
Yadav Prasad Koirala, Secretary of the Ministry and the director of the committee has directed the central officials to gather data from the areas where books have not been reached and distribute the books as soon as possible.
The centre informs that for this academic session, a total of 1 crore 97 lakhs books were to be published for Classes 4 to 10 where currently 1 crore 80 lakhs books have already been published, suggesting the centre has already published 90% of the books. The Spokesperson of the centre, Chitra Acharya said that among the published books, some books are still in the process of transportation and are only yet to reach the schools.
The centre has been publishing one lakh books daily and said that all the books will be printed within 15 days. They will be publishing about 15 lakhs books within Asar 10. Currently, it seems that there is more shortage of Social, English and Nepali books for Classes 6 to 8. Now, the Private Printing Press has also been publishing books for Classes 4 to 10 but due to a lack of coordination between the centre and the private sector, they lack data on who will be producing and distributing how many books for the students.
As the textbooks of Classes 5,8 and 10 will be changed from the academic session, the centre will only be producing the required stock. The centre also says that they are unable to print the translated books (books in English medium) for Classes 4,7 and 9 as they have not received the translated print of the books. Community Schools have started teaching in the English medium yet the government does not have information regarding the number of schools that need the translated books.
In the past, the unavailability of books seemed to be caused by the local vendors not picking up the books from the central provincial office and at times schools not purchasing the books despite the availability of books from the vendors.
Currently, the centre has been distributing books for Classes 4 to 10 in all 77 districts through local vendors since Jestha 5. The Private Printing business has been printing the books based on the information received of the number of lacking books said Deepak Bhandari who has been involved in printing and distributing books from the private sector.
