TEAM HERALD
teamherald@herald-goa.com
PANJIM: Facing the heat over delay in making available textbooks and ensuring the start of full-fledged instruction, the education department has assured that the textbooks would be delivered by June end.
The department however has claimed that around 60% of the books have reached the taluka ADEI office for distribution and has asked the schools to collect the books to distribute them to the students without waiting for all books to come according to a communiqué.
The department has cited the sheer quantum of textbooks that they have to supply as the reason for the delay. “There are approximately 97,000 students studying from classes I to IV in 1280 Government and Aided Primary Schools. There are approximately 1,05,000 students studying in classes V to VIII in 415 Government and aided middle schools. There are 96 titles of books to be printed and the total weight of the books amounts to more than 350 tonnes. Transportation of these books is taking pretty long,” the education department has said.
Since the second week of school has already commenced from Monday and since all textbooks are still not available, teachers and students have begun to worry if they would be able to complete the syllabus in time.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan Goa supplies free textbooks to students from class I to VIII studying in government and aided schools. These books are published and printed by the Directorate of Education by inviting tenders from printers.
The education department expects that by 20th of June 90% of the books will be available for distribution and by June 25, remaining 10% books will be distributed to the students.
It’s not just textbooks but notebooks too that are yet to arrive and the department expects the notebooks to be supplied to students of classes from II to IV of government schools for which orders have been placed with the vendors. These will be distributed by last week of June as also the raincoats for classes I to III.
Uniforms, which are supplied to classes I to III students of Government primary schools the coupons worth the cost of uniforms will be given to parents of students to buy the uniforms from the empanelled taluka level cloth merchants.
