The Ministry of Education and Skills Development introduced the Cambridge-aligned National School Curriculum for Classes 9 and 11 starting this academic year. However, textbooks are yet to reach schools, creating difficulties for students. During the Meet the Press session today, education minister Yeezang De Thapa said the ministry had planned to deliver the textbooks by the end of last month, but delays by local printing firms caused the shortage.
Initially, the ministry had planned to outsource the printing of textbooks outside Bhutan.
However, it later decided to award the work to local printing firms to support the country’s printing industry. Two major local firms were selected for the work.
‘‘There are 25 textbooks which need to be printed. And since this is the first time for the Bhutanese printers, it’s a design and print textbooks model. Since it is their first time, there was a delay from the design and printing of our printing firms, which is why we were not able to have the textbooks delivered to schools.’’
The minister added that soft copies of all 25 textbooks were provided to schools at the beginning of the academic year and are currently being piloted.
‘‘We have given three months for the schools to go through the textbooks, get the feedback from the students and teachers, so that we have error-free textbooks. We were supposed to be printing about 240,000 textbooks, and if in case there is any error in the textbooks, a huge cost in millions of ngultrum will be incurred. So to avoid this financial error, we gave three months for the school to give feedback.’’
As an immediate measure for midterm preparations, the ministry has started printing hard copies from the soft versions and distributing them to students.
For PP to Class 8, draft textbooks have already been developed and are currently under review. The design and layout phase is expected to be completed by July and August this year.
For Classes 10 and 12, teachers are still preparing the textbooks. The ministry expects the final versions to be ready by the end of this month, after which they will undergo several rounds of expert review.
Sonam Yuden & Sangay Chozom
Edited by Sonam Pem
