Flooded with students, Punjab govt schools face shortage of textbooks
Karam Prakash
Tribune News Service
Patiala, May 23
Anhad, a student of Class VIII of a government school in Patiala had to buy her SST, maths, and science books from the market.
Reason: shortage of books for Class I to VIII at the schools.
Similarly, Gurdish Kaur, a Class VI student, has to struggle for her studies as textbooks for maths and English are not available.
Punjab School Education Board, in fact, prints and supplies books to the Education Department for further distribution among the students of government schools free of cost.
But it has been learned that education of thousands of students is being compromised due to non-availability of textbooks.
The worst hit are the newly enrolled students of these schools. Even as the number of enrollments has seen a spurt this session, the Education Department had placed orders for textbooks in accordance with the student count of last session.
Amarjeet Singh, Patiala education officer, said that there was some shortage due to the rise in new admissions, but new orders had already been placed to meet the demand.
Democratic Teachers Front, an organisation of government teachers, claimed that the 80 per cent of textbooks for English medium classes — Class I to VIII — had not reached the schools yet.
The association said that it was ironic that they had been asked to teach students without the books in their hands.
Vikram Dev, state president, DTF, “The Education Minister seemingly is more concerned about providing free uniforms to the students. However, students need books to study through online classes.”
Meanwhile, Prof. Yograj, chairman, Punjab School Education Board, while maintaining that the situation was a temporary one, said, “This year, there was a huge shift of students from private to government schools which led to some supply shortage. Besides, textbooks of some subjects are to be updated. Textbooks will be provided to the schools over the next few weeks.”
