Staff Correspondent

Following the government changeover, primary and secondary education institutes are reintroducing the old curriculum from 14 years ago. As a result, the number of new textbooks that needed to be printed has gone up by 401.6 million, pushing up the printing cost.

The Ministry of Education has allocated Tk 5.5 billion more to print the large number of new textbooks needed for pre-primary to grade nine students in the new year. The initial total budget was Tk 12 billion, which has been increased to Tk 17.5 billion. The cost of printing new textbooks in the upcoming year will require Tk 3.5 billion more than in the current year.

The National Curriculum and Textbook Board or NCTB highlighted the need for a high number of textbooks under the 2012 curriculum as the reason for the increased budget.

At least 95 million more textbooks need to be printed in the upcoming year as the government has resumed the old curriculum, said NCTB Chairman Prof AKM Reazul Hasan.

Also, new books will be printed for tenth graders, which has pushed up the cost, he said.

"Initially, we had a budget of Tk 12 billion. However, we need to spend more as the number of textbooks increases and due to some other reasons. The NCTB proposed a budget of Tk 7.8 billion, but the government approved Tk5.5 billion," he told this Correspondent.

More than 307 million textbooks were printed at the end of 2023 for students in the academic year of 2024. The cost was Tk 14 billion. The cost will go up by Tk 3.5 billion this year. The NCTB chairman complained that publishers created a ‘syndicate’ and submitted tenders with inflated printing costs, which has pushed up expenses.

The interim government wants to continue the festivity of handing out new textbooks to students on the first day of the new year. Therefore, the NCTB wants to complete the printing of textbooks by Dec 31.

However, the printing work started late due to the correction of books and other reasons. For some books, the publishers have yet to receive the final script. Hence, the NCTB officers are not confident that students from all grades will receive the new textbooks at the beginning of the year.

As of now, 41 publishers have received the work order to print textbooks for grades one to three. Tenders have been finalised for the publishers to print books for most other grades. Tenders have yet to be finalised for book printings for ninth grade.

However, no information was available on the number of publishers in this category.

For the first time in 15 years, all textbooks are being printed in Bangladesh.

The army will also print 10 million copies of textbooks for grade 10 students. They received the work order through a direct purchase system, the NCTB chairman said.

After the fall of the Awami League government, the interim government announced on Sept 1, the ninth month of the academic year, that the new curriculum was not viable for implementation and decided to reintroduce the 2012 curriculum.

“A new curriculum devoid of study streams (like science, humanities) was introduced in grade nine last year. However, the education ministry said it was not implementable. It also announced the reintroduction of the study streams. Hence, 66.4 million new copies of textbooks are being printed for tenth graders,” NCTB chairman said.

He stated another reason for increased printing costs is that the publishers floated tenders with a 10 to 15 percent rise in expenses for each forma. “They created a syndicate and increased the cost. Although they submitted tenders with 53 percent lower cost over the last few years.”

bdnews24.com could not get a comment from Bangladesh Printing Industry Association President Md Rabbani Jabbar about the allegation of ‘increasing cost per forma.’

The owner of Ananda Printers did not respond though bdnews24.com called him several times on his mobile phone.