Parents are tired by printing PDFs of textbooks.
Six days of the new academic year passed yesterday, Monday. But a large number of students have not yet received free textbooks. As a result, students have turned to print copies of the online version of the textbooks in PDF format. Parents have to pay a high price to download and print them. In addition, they are suffering while downloading from the website. However, it is not possible for poor and limited-income parents to take PDF prints. As a result, inequality is created.
The National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) is working to print 40 crore 15 lakh 67 thousand 202 copies of books for 6 crore 43 lakh 47 thousand 762 students in the 2025 academic year. Only 6 crore books have been distributed to students for free on the first day of the year. It may take February to distribute the remaining 34 crore books. In the meantime, the online version of the textbooks has been inaugurated for students to use until the new textbooks are available.
On Wednesday, Education Advisor Wahiduddin Mahmud inaugurated the online version of the textbook and unveiled the packaging at the International Mother Language Institute in Segunbagicha, the capital. Speaking as the chief guest at the event, the Education Advisor expressed regret that the textbooks could not reach all the students on the first day of the year.
However, the parents are increasingly saddened by not getting the printed books for their children. They have to pay a high price for free books to print online PDFs. Many parents complain that they are spending 350 to 550 taka per book to get the PDF printed. The cost of some class books is even higher.
When asked about this, Saleha Begum, the guardian of a sixth-grade student, told Aamer Soomi yesterday that the sixth-grade Bengali (Charupath) book has 109 pages. If this book is printed at a shop, it costs 3 taka per page, 327 taka. To this, I had to add 50 taka for spiral binding. In total, I had to spend 377 taka for this book. The science book has 138 pages. The cost of the book is 464 taka. The guardian also said that he does not want to print any more books because of the high cost.
Mithu, a computer shopkeeper in front of Banasree Ideal School and College, said that if you want to print a document from a pen drive, there is a charge of 10 taka per page. And for a spiral binding of ten to one hundred pages, we charge 50 taka. The minimum charge for a spiral binding is 30 taka. He said that if someone prints one to one and a half hundred pages, we charge 3 taka per page. The shopkeeper also said that the work of printing books is going on this week.
Mizanur Rahman, the guardian of a student of Motijheel School and College in the capital, said that his son has been admitted to class 8. Classes have not started in the school yet. He will go to class from the 12th. He did not print the PDF as it would cost 2 to 3 thousand taka to print PDF books online. Complaining, the guardian said that the authorities concerned were definitely indifferent to the students’ studies. They know that books have to be given every year. Why didn’t they prepare this time?
Mishu Chowdhury, a guardian of Viqarunnisa Noon School and College, said, “The government changed at the end of the year and this chaos has been created. Everything is changing. We have to see both the good and bad of the change. Now there is only one hope, at least by January, that our children will get all the books.”
Md. Sajjadul Islam, a teacher at Dhanmondi Ideal Adarsh School, said that there is a problem downloading the PDF copy of the book on the NCTB website (https://www.nctb.gov.in/). When I click on download, it gives the message ‘Too many visitors at the same time, please wait for the download’. After trying several times, the textbooks of ten subjects of class six have been printed.
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