Textbooks continue to be an issue of debate

The Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matriculation and Higher Secondary Schools Managements Association, in a resolution, said that they faced difficulties in collecting textbooks.

While the associations of private schools have complained about the flaws in distribution of textbooks, a few schools said that the private textbooks recommended by the Government were not available according to the semester system.

Availability

However, Chief Education Officer T. Rajendhiran said that the

Samacheer Kalvi (Uniform Equitable Syllabus) textbooks for all classes except Plus-One were available and the schools were informed about it. Many schools said that they were not aware of the availability of textbooks and were yet to collect the textbooks for Standard II.

According to the principal of a private school in the city, except for Standard IX and X, the school was following textbooks by private distributors, which was against the policy of uniform syllabus implemented by the State Government last year.

The Tamil Nadu Nursery, Primary, Matriculation and Higher Secondary Schools Managements Association, in a resolution, said that they faced difficulties in collecting textbooks.

The members said that there were instances where the school authorities were made to wait at the distribution centres till 9 p.m.

According to G. Krishnaraj, General Secretary of the association, before the implementation of Samacheer Kalvi syllabus the private publishers delivered the textbooks in May, well before the commencement of classes. The Government should take steps to make textbooks easily available to schools on time, he said and added that delay in distribution of textbooks for the next two semesters would affect the academic schedule.

Free textbooks

“After implementing Uniform Equitable Syllabus, it was unfair that only students in private schools are asked to pay for the books. Government should provide books free of cost for all students,” said Mr. Krishnaraj.

Whereas, the Students' Welfare Association of Parents, Coimbatore, in a letter to the School Education Department, had asked the Government to provide textbooks to students or make the textbooks available in the market to prevent private schools from charging excess fee for textbooks.

Even as the Uniform equitable Syllabus was implemented last year, parents from many schools had complained that the schools were discreetly following textbooks published by private publishers (apart form those recommended by the Government) in addition to Samacheer Kalvi textbooks thereby overburdening the students.

According to Ms. Vishalakshi, the schools were informed of the list of books of private publishers late and the samples were not made available on time, hence most schools have not opted for private textbooks recommended by the Government.