Team Herald
PANJIM: The first mid-term exams are due in a couple of weeks, but some government and aided middle and high schools are yet to receive textbooks.
Over a month after the new academic year started, the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT) Goa has completed distributing free textbooks to all government and aided primary schools across the State. But, while the elementary level has been fully covered, around 80 percent of middle and high schools have received textbooks with officials assuring to cover the remaining in the next few days.
The delay, SCERT Director Nagraj Honnekeri told Herald, was due to incessant rains in Kolhapur where the textbooks are printed and ferried to Goa via trucks. “Continuous rains in Kolhapur resulted in delay in providing textbooks to students. Precautionary measures were taken to ensure the printed books are not soiled at the time of printing and transportation,” he said.
A Kolhapur-based printing press had won the bid to print several thousand textbooks of all subjects for Classes I to VIII for this academic year. “Whatever stock we had in store was distributed to the students as the curriculum is the same this year as well. We had placed orders for additional stock before the start of the academic year,” he added.
The officer stated that schools in at least four talukas have been covered on a daily basis. The non-availability of textbooks had raised serious concern among students and parents as the first mid-term exams are scheduled in the next couple of weeks.
