Many primary and secondary level students across the country are going to over a month-long holiday while they have yet to get all free textbooks from the government.
Till Monday, around five crore out of nearly 39 crore free textbooks were yet to be printed, officials at the National Curriculum and Textbook Board said.
From today, a straight 40-day holiday begins in all government primary schools mainly for the month of Ramadan.
The students reading in secondary and junior secondary classes at the government and non-government educational institutions are set to go on a 38-day holiday from February 28 on the same occasions.
The situation may compel the students to pass the entire holiday, ending at the fourth month of the year, not having all the textbooks in hand.
Putting the delay down to a shortage of bookbinders and an ongoing crisis of papers, the board officials said that they would be able to distribute all the textbooks by March.
Earlier on January 1, at the inaugural ceremony of the online version of the textbooks, Secondary and Higher Education Division senior secretary Siddique Zobair said that all textbooks would be sent for distribution among the students across the country by January 30.
NCTB chairman AKM Reazul Hassan at the same programme said that they would distribute the rest of the primary textbooks by January 5.
On January 1, the board sent only six crore copies of textbooks to upazilas for distribution.
Till Monday, out of the total 9,19,54,526 primary-level textbooks, 9,07,78,851 copies or 98.72 per cent of textbooks were printed, while 97.11 per cent of the total primary level textbooks were reached to the upazila level for distribution among the students.
Regarding the secondary-level textbooks, out of total 30.81 crore books, 25.80 crore have been printed of which 21.22 crore have been reached to the upazila level for distribution among the students.
Reazul told New Age on Tuesday that till date over 34 crore textbooks were printed and around 90 per cent of the students received some of their textbooks.
‘Around four crore textbooks out of the total 39 crore textbooks are now awaiting binding,’ he said, adding that they were facing some challenges, including a shortage of bookbinders and a crisis of printing paper.
He mentioned that earlier the number of textbooks for this year was 40.15 crore from which some were later dropped as redundant.
Replying to a question, he said that they would distribute all the books by February 28.
At least two senior officials of the board, however, said that it would take at least the first two weeks of March to distribute all the textbooks.
In Dhaka city, Nilkhet High School headmaster Md Shariful Islam Mollah said on Tuesday that the Class IX students had yet to get six out of total 12 textbooks.
Md Jamil Uddin, principal of University Laboratory School and College, also in Dhaka city, echoed the Nilkhet High headmaster, saying that they had not yet got all the secondary level textbooks.
Some printers earlier blamed the government that it delayed the procedures to commission the printing works to them.
After the ouster of Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League regime on August 5, the interim government decided to print the textbooks for this year as per the 2012 curriculum, overturning the previous government’s decision to follow the 2021 curriculum.
Following the government decision, the board cancelled the previous tenders, launched an evaluation of the textbooks as per the 2012 national curriculum and floated fresh tenders for printing the textbooks.
Some of the printers said that they received work orders even in December, which was supposed to come by August as was the usual case in the previous years.