A month on, new Class 11 books yet to reach all schools

The delay persists despite repeated assurances by the state government that the books would be ready and dispatched soon after classes reopened.

After the summer vacation, schools in Tamil Nadu were reopened on June 1. Though the state government had promised that the textbooks for Class 11 students would be distributed during the first week of June itself, it has so far been patchy in many schools in the city. 

The government and schools are pointing fingers at one another for the delay, even as from Class 11 students are struggling. Experts warned that the absence of textbooks would not only hamper the preparation for board examinations, it would also have a telling effect on the competitive tests like NEET.

“We did not get the Class 11 Tamil textbooks. Though we kept on requesting the government, the officials are yet to distribute the material,” the principal of a higher secondary school from Pammal in the city suburbs said. According to the school management, they have already paid the required amount for the new textbooks to the authorities concerned. 

At present, added the principal, the students were taught Tamil by taking printouts of the textbooks through web-sites. As this newspaper had reported two weeks ago, students and teachers of many city schools have been re-sorting to print outs and photocopies of the new syllabus so as to get started with the classes.

However, sources from the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation, which is the nodal agency for transporting, supplying and distributing textbooks to various stakeholders including government schools, said that the books were ready, and blamed the school representatives of failing to turn up to collect them.

A senior teacher from a school at Pallavaram added that there still was a shortage. “Some students did not get the textbooks due to supply shortage. We are expecting to receive them shortly,” she said.

School Education department sources said all the printing work of the new textbooks was over couple of weeks ago, and claimed there was no delay on the part of government printing press. “It is up to the schools to collect it on time,” maintained a senior official.