Schools warned against using help books of pvt publishers

Balwant Garg

Tribune News Service

Faridkot, August 17

The State Council of Education Research and Training (SCERT) has warned schools against using help books published by private publishers on the school premises.

“In case any help or guide book of a private publisher is found being use in any school in the state, the head of school will face strict action for non-compliance of orders,” reads a letter sent by Director, SCERT, to all district education officers (senior secondary and elementary) and heads of all schools in the state. The letter was sent on Thursday.

For the mental growth of students in schools, they should rely on text books. However, many schools are relying on help and guide books of private publishers, said the director in his letter.

The school heads need to ensure that no private publisher is allowed to enter the school and no teacher gets any sample help book or gift from such publishers, said the director.

Many private publishers are known for charging exorbitant prices of their books and they provide good profit to book sellers and commission to the schools, which make their books mandatory.

Students have common complaints of erroneous calculations, spelling mistakes, a mix-up in content ideas, shallow exercises and poor arrangement of topics in many of these books, but the schools rarely consider the students’ complaints seriously, it read.

Besides students, teachers also said mistakes were confusing learners and had compromised with teaching as they had to grapple with the wrong identification of the parts of laboratory equipment, errors in the answer key in mathematics and in many other core subjects, namely English and Punjabi subjects.

Errors in the books are blamed on poor quality control during the vetting of textbooks and cases where publishers influence the school managements for the approval of flawed books.

The sale of pirated books, which are replete with errors, is another major complaint of the students.

These books are being sold in the market without any check. In one such case, a book seller was fined Rs 5,000 by the District Consumer Forum, Faridkot, for selling pirated and error stuffed book some days ago.