Doubts have been created about the textbook festival on January 1 and on-time distribution of free textbooks as around crores of book of primary and secondary levels are yet to be printed.
According to the information of the Directorate of Primary Education until Wednesday (December 22), nearly one crore textbooks for pre-primary to primary level are yet to be printed.
More than 6 crore books of secondary level are yet to be printed, according to sources.
About 35 crore books are being printed for pre-primary to class 9 students in the 2022 academic year. Of this, about 10 crore is for primary and 25 crore for secondary level students.
Till Wednesday morning out of 93,034,030 books of primary level from class 1-5, printing of 87,042,748 books has been completed. Of these, 80,486,673 books have reached the field level. The rate of book delivery at this level is 87 percent.
Out of 6,605,480 new books of pre-primary, printing of 3,302,740 books have been completed. All the printed books of pre-primary have reached the field level.
And for the students of small ethnic groups, 100 percent of the allocated books, that is 2,19,364, have reached the district level.
A total of 9,294,022 books at the primary level are yet to be printed.
On the other hand, out of 247,155,202 books of secondary level, 18.5 crore books have been printed so far. Of this, about 13 crore has reached the district level. More than 6 crore books have not yet been printed, according to reliable sources.
Doubts have been raised on whether the remaining books will reach the district level by January 1 or not.
When contacted to know about the latest development in printing of secondary level books, National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) Chairman Professor Narayan Chandra Saha declined to disclose the number of books printed till Wednesday.
He told Bangladesh Post, “I cannot disclose the information to anyone. All the books will be delivered across the country by December 31; that’s all I can say.”
