Delay in printing, students won’t get all books initially

Printing of books is underway at a press in the capital’s Matuail area. The work on book-binding is also in full swing at the same time. The workers at the press are having a busy time.

This was the scenario at the Bright Printing Press at around 11:00 am on 12 December. Press manager Abdul Kaiyum said they had finished printing the textbooks for the first and second grades. They are now working on the textbooks for the third grade.

The Bright Printing Press has got a contract to print some 1,328,000 text books. They already have delivered 60 per cent of the books. The press manager hopes the works on the remaining books will end very soon.

It is learnt that there has been notable progress in printing the textbooks for the first, second and the third grades. However, the process of starting printing books from fourth to tenth grade is not finished yet.

The delay is caused by the changes brought up in the curriculum following the regime change, book revision and cancellation of the old tenders. The trend of providing students with the new textbooks on the first day of the year started in 2010.

However, the then government could not provide new books to all students due to some tender related complications. There will be no such festival this year.

The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) is in charge of printing the textbooks. NCTB chairman professor AKM Riazul Hasan told Prothom Alo that textbooks for first to fifth grades will be printed within December. They also started printing books for sixth to eighth grades. The advisory committee on procurement has approved the printing of textbooks for the ninth and tenth grades. The work order for this may come by Sunday.

The new academic calendar will begin only after two weeks.

Asked whether the students would get the books in the beginning of the year, the NCTB chairman said they had planned to print the Bengali, English and Mathematics textbooks first. They will deliver a total of 200 million books on 1 January.

He hoped the remaining books would be printed within the next 10 days.

The NCTB sources said the number of textbooks for first to fifth grade is around 40 million. The NCTB has planned to finish the works by 20 December.

The number of books for the fourth and fifth grades is more than 40 million. The relevant presses have been issued the notice of award to print these books. However, the work on the negotiation was yet to be finished as of 10 December.

Usually the presses are asked to deliver the books within 45 days of signing the contract. The works on printing around 200,000 primary books for the small ethnic groups are underway. Besides, the number of textbooks for elementary level is around 6.2 million.

NCTB sources say the total number of books for the ninth and tenth grades is around 310 million.

The contract for printing books for sixth to eighth grade is under negotiation following the issuance of the work order.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, a NCTB official said, “Usually it doesn’t take much time to start the work after the work order. Besides, we already got the approval from the advisory committee on government procurement for the fund to print textbooks for the ninth and tenth grades.”

A separate inspection agency outside the NCTB monitors the quality of these textbooks. That agency is finalised through tenders.

Willing to be unnamed, a NCTB official told Prothom Alo, “There was a delay in finalising the monitoring agencies for secondary level books. It was finalised last Tuesday.”

The academic activities from third to sixth grade were conducted based on a new curriculum this year. The new curriculum was supposed to be implemented in the other grades from the next year.

Meanwhile, the Awami League government was toppled in the face of a mass uprising on 5 August. After that, the interim government discarded the new curriculum and decided to adopt the national curriculum of 2012 and print new textbooks as per that.

It was already assumed that there would be some delay due to the revisions and new tenders. However, now it seems that it will take more time to finish the work than the assumed time.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, president of the Bangladesh Mudran Shilpa Samity (Printing Industries Association of Bangladesh) the printing of new textbooks was delayed due to various reasons. Besides, there is a crisis of papers too. They are hopeful about providing all books to the students of first, second and third grades.

He said the NCTB received a proposal to deliver at least a few of the textbooks to the students of fourth to tenth grade. The proposal is under consideration of the NCTB.

We have seen in the past that a section of the printing press was trying to deliver low quality textbooks. The allegation surfaced this time too. For instance, an image in a textbook book for the second grade was visible from the other side of the page. There are also doubts regarding maintaining the thickness and brightness of the pages of the new textbooks.

Speaking to Prothom Alo, NCTB chairman AKM Riazul Hasan said, “Already around 60,000-70,000 books printed by some of the presses have been cancelled. We won’t compromise the quality.”

*This report appeared on the print and online versions of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten in English by Ashish Basu