New academic session on but no textbooks in govt schools
WHY THE DELAY? A month into new academic session, government school students in Punjab and Haryana are without books. They have wasted most of their time playing games in classrooms or are being asked to study from secondhand books. While officials of ed
STUDENTS IN PUNJAB MAY NOT GET BOOKS BEFORE JULY
Call it irony or anything else. When the students of private schools are fast covering their syllabus, government school students, who mostly belong to poor families, of Classes 1 to 8 have no books to study from.
They are unlikely to get their complete set of textbooks before July. The Punjab School Education Board (PSEB) has already conveyed this to all government schools in writing. While the children are struggling in the absence of books or are being told by teachers to get printouts of books made available online, officials cite “nationwide crisis” in availability of paper to cover up their failure to ensure supply books on time.
However, sources blame the lethargic attitude of officials of the education department for the delay. “Ideally, they should make preparation for printing of books one year in advance, but the board starts the process in January or March,” said a senior official. The department has to provide 2.20 crore books to the students studying in Classes 1 to 5 free of cost for which 9,000 metric tonnes of paper is required.
Last week, the Punjab State Scheduled Castes Commission took suo motu action on the issue, summoning officials of the education department. “When the matter reached me last week, I immediately rang up a few officials. They told me that students can access the books online. The reply was shocking, as rural and poor students hardly have any access to internet,” said commission chairman Rajesh Bagha.
The department has sent old books to some schools in different districts, but they are not enough. In Jalandhar district, against a requirement of 7,95,272 books for Classes 1 to 8, only 2,06,490 books have been made available so far. The requirement for Classes 6 to 8 for computer science subject is 52,727 whereas the district schools have received 7,193 books.
When contacted, PSBSE chairman Balbir Singh Dhol denied any shortage of books in schools. “There are a few titles which have to be provided by the NCERT and have been delayed. Otherwise, all books have been sent. There may have been some procedural delay,” he claimed.
14 LAKH HARYANA STUDENTS WITHOUT BOOKS FOR A MONTH
CHANDIGARH: Even after a month of the academic session, 14.5 lakh government school students of Classes 1 to 8 in Haryana are without textbooks.
The students are reaching schools daily, but do not have much to do. They are made to study from “old and torn” borrowed books. The department says it is on purpose as teachers have been asked to use April as “catch-up month’’ and fill “skill passbook” of each student to assess their learning level.
Additional chief secretary, school education, PK Das told HT that while books are ready and being dispatched to the schools, the teachers undertook the catch-up activities to adopt the methodology as per the children’s needs. The teachers, however, said the exercise was only to “fill in the blanks”, calling it a wastage of one month of the students. “This has hit the attempt of the state government to impart qualitative education encourage more and more students to come to the government schools,” said a teacher, requesting anonymity.
Primary Teachers’ Sangh general secretary Deepak Goswami, a teacher at a Karnal school, said the authorities were repeatedly urged to supply textbooks, but to no avail. Another teacher, Sube Singh Sujan, said the teachers had arranged old books from the pass-outs, though the same were not enough. Several students HT talked to, including Rahul and Ashok of the government school in Rohtak, held that their studies had suffered due to non-availability of books.
HIMACHAL SETS EXAMPLE BY GIVING BOOKS IN ADVANCE
DHARAMSHALA: Where Punjab and Haryana failed, Himachal Pradesh delivered. The HP Board of School Education achieved the 100% target of distribution of textbooks to the school students before the start of academic session 2017-2018.
Board secretary Vishal Sharma said the books were sent to distribution centres in each of the 12 districts as early as February.
The books were distributed in schools block-wise by the departments of higher and elementary education. “The board had set a target to distribute the books before the start of new session. Orders were placed in time and printers asked to complete the printing work and supply the books to the board as per their commitment,” he said.
The result: Government school kids had the books with them on day one. When contacted, heads of government schools in town and rural areas of Kangra district confirmed timely distribution of textbooks among the students.