Textbook distribution in govt schools delayed
Thousands of government school students in the province are yet to receive free textbooks because of a delay in their distribution ahead of the new academic year.
According to sources, the Punjab Textbook Board had been asked to provide 50.1 million books before the start of the academic year. However, the board has so far provided only 30.2 million textbooks to the Programme and Implementation Unit of the Punjab School Education Department.
School education department officials told The Express Tribune that in addition to the remote areas, free textbooks have also not been given to thousands of students admitted to various grades.
Sources in the textbook board alleged that publishers awarded tenders to provide the books had failed to complete the task by the deadline.
The school education department is reportedly facing problems in planning to begin the teaching in the new academic year due to the unavailability of the books, causing anxiety among the parents of the students of government schools.
The sources said the department had received complaints from almost all districts of Punjab that the distribution of free textbooks among the students had not been completed. The process has not even been started in some remote districts because of the unavailability of the free books.
The academic year is scheduled to begin on April 1 across the province and the school education department is responsible to provide free text books to its 48,000 schools in all districts.
“According to the procedure, the Punjab Textbook Board hands over the free textbooks to the Programme Monitoring and Implementation Unit of the Punjab School Education Department, which then distributes the books among the chief executive officers (CEOs) of all district education authorities,” a senior official of the department said.
The officers are responsible to distribute the books among the schools in their districts as per requirement.
The CEOs form teams led by the district education officers and all deputy DEOs to distribute the free textbooks among the government schools.
The official said the department had advised that the textbooks should be handed over by April to all government school students enrolled this year. However, the books had not been provided and this was the reason that thousands of students had not yet received the books,” he added.
“The process of book distribution has started in Lahore and other big districts but the procedure is slow because we were not supplied the number of books as per our demand,” the education department official said.
“We have not received the completion report of the textbooks’ distribution from any district so far and maybe we will not be able to distribute the books by April 1 if the higher authorities in the Punjab government would not take action to resolve the issue as we have a shortage of millions of books,” he added.
The official said the department had also given the task of the officials in the districts to admit more students to the schools and a campaign had been launched to improve the literacy rate in Punjab, but the efforts in this regard would be affected if the students were not given free books.
Punjab Teachers Union secretary general Rana Liaqat Ali said the distribution of textbooks among the students in Lahore was under way but the process might have been slowed down by heavy rains during the past week.
Published in The Express Tribune, March 27th, 2023.