Students all set to get new books on New Year day

The students across the country usually start their new academic year with the smell of freshly-printed textbooks every year, but it may not happen to all the students this year due to various reasons, including paper price hike and power cuts.

The government would not be able to distribute the textbooks among all the students on January 1 as all the books have not yet reached the educational institutions till filling of this report on Thursday.

According to the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB), about 62 per cent of around 10 crore primary textbooks and 80 per cent of 24 crore books for secondary students for the 2023 academic year have so far reached the upazilas as of Thursday.

However, 38 per cent books of primary and 20 per cent textbooks of secondary schools are yet to reach the upazilas with just one day left for the book festival scheduled to be held on Sunday.

Usually, the NCTB can send around 95 per cent of the textbooks to the upazilas by mid-December every year.

NCTB and printing house owners said that the problem was created due to high price of paper, load-shedding and delay in placing work orders to printers. While talking to The Business Post, NCTB Chairman Farhadul Islam said they are trying their level best to deliver the textbooks to all the upazilas on time. All primary and secondary students are expected to get their full set of textbooks by January 10, he said, adding that the delay in the delivery will not cause major problems as all the students will not show up on the first day to collect their textbooks.

Like previous years, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the book festival at 10 am today by giving a set of books to one student of each class at the Prime Minister’s Office in the capital.

However, the book festival will be organized at all primary and secondary level educational institutions across the country on Sunday, the first day of New Year. The central book festival for primary students will be held at the central playground of Dhaka University (DU) in the capital.

However, the central book festival for secondary students will be organised at Kapasia Pilot High School ground in Gazipur where Education Minister Dr Dipu Moni will be present as the chief guest.

NCTB sources said over 346,163,000 textbooks will be delivered to 4.9 crore students from primary to secondary level this year.

Of them, 99,853,000 books for pre-primary and primary students and 246,310,000 for secondary students will be delivered for the 2023 academic year.

The ruling Awami league government started free textbook distribution programme in 2010 with distributing 435.24 crore books in last 13 years (2010-2022). The success has led to a significant improvement in enrolment at the primary and secondary levels while it brought down the dropout rates in the country. A total of 19,90,96,561 textbooks were distributed to 2,76,62,529 students in 2010 while 34,70,22,130 books were distributed among 4,17,26,856 students in 2022.

The government spends, on average, Tk 1,000 crore on free of cost textbooks every year.