BENGALURU: In the wake of the High Court pulling up the state government for delay in distribution of school textbooks, statistics from the Education Department reveal that 45.26 per cent of textbooks are yet to reach students.
With schools resuming for Classes 9 to 12, the court had on Tuesday rapped the government on the matter, stating that attendance in schools was meaningless without textbooks. It has sought a progress report on distribution of textbooks to students of Classes 9 and 10 by August 30.
A top official from the department told TNIE that printing of all textbooks will be completed in the first week of September, and distributed to students of Classes 1 to 10 by September 15.As of now, Vijayapura is at the bottom, with the lowest supply of textbooks. The district got just 27.3 per cent of the 28,96,124 textbooks requested. It is followed by Haveri with 27.50 per cent of 18,10,152 textbooks requested, Dharwad 28.19 per cent of 18,75,594, Gadag 28.91 per cent of 11,52,210 and Uttara Kannada 30.32 per cent of 6,04,140.
The districts with the highest supply of textbooks are Chitradurga (88.91 per cent), Tumakuru (88.15 per cent), Chikkaballapur (88 per cent), Bengaluru South (87.69 per cent), Bengaluru Rural (87.31 per cent), Kolar (86.94 per cent) and Davanagere (86.11 per cent).
The department is trying to expedite the distribution process, more so now as a meeting to discuss the reopening of Classes 1 to 8 is scheduled on August 30. Reiterating that 72 per cent of textbooks have been printed and distribution started the previous week, the official said that 54.74 per cent of textbooks have reached the districts and the rest are with the printers. “Everything has to be updated on the platform before vehicles with textbooks are sent to districts. Every textbook is being monitored,” the official said.