Out of print: Academic term begins with a shortage of books

Private schools have already changed their curriculum to avoid problems.

KARACHI:

Some children have been going to school with surprisingly light bags slung over their shoulders because the Sindh Textbook Board hasn’t been able to print enough books for them.

As is the case each year, there simply weren’t enough books for each of the 4.3 million children studying in classes one through ten. Two weeks have elapsed since April 1, the start of the new academic year, but some children are still waiting to get their hands on the required books.

It has been over a decade since the board took up responsibility for distributing books free of cost to public school students. The board’s acting chairperson, Qadir Bakhsh Rind, said that textbooks would be distributed by the end of April - subject to release of funds by the government.



While talking to The Express Tribune, Rind said the finance department had not yet released funds required to print such a massive number of books. He explained that around Rs1,300 million were allocated for producing textbooks. “We received only half of the allocated amount. The remaining half was put on hold by the finance department.”

He added that the board had sent requests to the finance department for the release of funds, stating that the publishers might stop printing books without being given their due first. “The publishers had completed around 70 per cent of the task. But their payments are still due,” he said. “Textbooks will be distributed free of cost at 48,000 public schools once the publishers are paid and they complete the task.”

When contacted by The Express Tribune, the education department’s additional secretary, Rehan Iqbal Baloch, said the process of printing textbooks had started three weeks behind the schedule because of the retirement of the board’s former chairperson, Abdul Salam Khwaja. “There was no one to take responsibility of the procurement process in absence of the board’s head. So the April 10 deadline for textbooks distribution at schools could not be met.”

The process finally began when Rind was appointed as the acting chairperson, but then the board faced a shortage of funds.”We now have our fingers crossed for the finance department to give us the remaining amount.”

Despite repeated attempts, the caretaker finance minister Syed Shabbar Zaidi could not be reached for comments.

Avoiding problems

After experiencing the same problem for a couple of years, private schools changed their curriculum and switched to textbooks printed by private publishers. All Private Schools Management Association’s chairperson, Syed Khalid Shah, said, “Privately-owned schools found this switch unavoidable because of the bureaucratic delays in publication of the board’s textbooks every year. Private schools cannot afford this hold-up which leads to disruption of academic activities. When teachers used to ask students why they had come without textbooks, students would often use the exuse that they weren’t available at any bookstore.”

Despite the shortage of textbooks at the start of academic year, he said private institutions used to follow the board’s textbooks at least for Sindhi, Urdu and Islamiyat courses. But during last one or two years even this practice was abandoned, he added.

Quality control?

Meanwhile, education experts have also registered their reservations about the quality of content in the board’s textbooks. Each year the team which was made responsible for the content and those who review them had constructed a sort of a ‘monopoly’ as their names kept rotating in every edition without bringing any significant changes to meet the modern needs.

“Education is an ever-changing subject. The quality of the public education system has only deteriorated as it has resisted change and inputs from qualified experts,” said Afshan A Razzak, an educationist who has privately prepared an art curriculum with textbooks. “There is a need to enact an open and transparent system for selection of the team that writes the content and reviews the textbooks.”

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th, 2013.