Hyderabad: Students in government schools in Telangana will receive their textbooks on time for the new academic year. The Government Textbook Press under the School Education Department has already sent out 90% of the free textbooks to various districts.
Ch Ramana Kumar, the director of the Textbook Press, stated that this year, textbooks were printed early. In the previous two years, students had issues due to late book availability. By the first week of June, all schools should have their textbooks, with distribution completed by June 5. With the introduction of English medium, bilingual textbooks for Classes I to VIII were printed in the past two years. Class IX was added last year, and now Class X is included. Because of the increase in pages, textbooks are split into two parts: summative I and summative II.
For the 2024-25 academic year, around 1.40 crore free textbooks are needed for about 28,77,675 government school students. 1.26 lakh books have already been sent to districts. The textbooks are also available in the market. To reduce weight, the paper thickness has been decreased from 90 GSM to 70 GSM, and the cover page thickness from 250 GSM to 200 GSM. For example, the Class I English medium textbooks now weigh 1.408 kgs, which is 583 grams lighter than last year’s books.
