Although it’s been nearly a month since school reopened, class 10 SSLC students in several State syllabus schools are yet to receive some of their textbooks. The students are worried that the delay will affect their performance in the board examination. This has forced them to rely on soft copies or photocopies of textbooks in the classroom.
Students who have enrolled for private tutorials are also worried as their mock tests have started. This is in preparation for the board examination that is slated to be held in March 2020.
“The teachers at our tuition centre are telling us to attempt the questions we know and based on what we have learned during lectures. This is a crucial year and we cannot afford to waste any time,” said a class 10 student of a private school in the city.
student said: “We have not got our social science and third language textbooks. Our schools have given us photocopies of the first few chapters.”
School managements are urging the Karnataka Textbook Society (KTBS) to step in to rectify the problem.
D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary of the Associated Management of Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka, said the delay in some textbooks was not just for class 10, but for several other grades too. Students of RTE quota in some schools were yet to receive textbooks that are supposed to be provided for free. “This is clear failure on the part of the Education Department officials. There are also allegations that officials are demanding a bribe of ₹3,000 to ₹5,000 per school to release the books,” he said. The management of textbook distribution was a failure as some schools had additional books that were lying unused, Mr. Kumar said.
A senior official in KTBS said all the textbooks were distributed to the office of the jurisdictional Block Educational Officer and would reach schools shortly. They attributed the delay to distribution rather than at the printing stage.