In the Himali districts of Karnali Province, the academic session for students started in the second week of February. However, the students have not yet received their textbooks, which has created an artificial problem, forcing students to attend school without books. This issue has been recurring every year due to weak policies and action plans of the government.
Chudamani Paudel, Director General of the Education and Human Resource Development Center and committee coordinator, discovered that private publications were not yet listed to print the textbooks after a meeting. He immediately contacted Baikunth Aryal, Executive Director of the Curriculum Development Center, to request that the cataloging work be completed quickly. It has become apparent that due to the government's failure to make timely policy decisions, students do not always receive books on time. Moreover, a lack of coordination between the federal and state governments exacerbates the problem.
The government has a policy of providing free textbooks to ensure that school education is accessible to all and maintains quality. This year, a total of 25.3 million books for classes 1 to 10 were scheduled to be printed. Janak Shiksha Samagri Kendra was given the right to print 15 million books for classes 6 to 10, of which 75 lakh books have been printed so far. The General Manager of Janak Shiksha, Anil Kumar Jha, informed the committee that the printing work is in progress, and all books from classes 6 to 10 will be printed and delivered to schools by the 15th of Chait.
However, private publishing houses have expressed confusion about when the books will be published because the Curriculum Development Center has not yet listed them. According to Deepak Bhandari, a representative of private publications, although they have applied to be listed in the course, the decision has not been made. He further stated that they were not able to print the books for Karnali because they were not listed in time until February. The syllabus of class 5 has also been changed, and private publishers have not received a copy of the syllabus to print the book. A total of 1 crore 18 lahks 49 thousand 369 books should be printed for a total of 25 lakh 91 thousand 393 students from class 1 to 5.
Director General Poudel has requested the committee to make a quick decision on the printing of textbooks by pointing out the syllabus. He also instructed the private sector to print and deliver the books on time to the students. Although instructions were given to start the new academic session, Karnali Province did not agree and started the session in February.
Baikunth Aryal, Executive Director of the Curriculum Development Center, reported that the process of cataloging the books of private publications for printing has reached its final stage. "The work of listing private publications will be completed within a week," Executive Director Aryal said, "Printing copies will be available only after names are listed for printing."
Karnali Pradesh
