Guides for school children likely to be banned

The School Education Department is seriously contemplating banning guides and workbooks by private publishers for school children.

Though the state government is phasing out “boring” old syllabus and replacing it with new syllabus by including a number of activities and experiments which create interest among students to learn, the purpose of this initiative was getting defeated by the “guides and workbooks” by brought out by private publishers, according to an education department official.

The State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), after a thorough exercise, introduced new textbooks based on innovative syllabus for classes from first to third and 6th and 7th from this academic year.

In the next academic year, new syllabus will be introduced for classes 4, 5, 8 and 9.

SSC students will have new syllabus for 2014-15 academic year.

The new textbooks are child-friendly and designed with appropriate exercises and projects to promote children’s innate abilities like critical, dialectical and creative thinking, reflection, analysis, reasoning and imagination.

However, the officials were shocked to know that a number of guides and workbooks by private publishers were available in the market which will provide readymade answers.

“The objective of the new textbooks is to develop skills. But the guides and workbooks are giving readymade answers killing the creativity and imagination of students,” professor N Upender Reddy of the APSCERT told school education minister S Sailajanath at a meeting held with authors of textbooks at the Secretariat on Wednesday.

Speaking to Express later, Upender Reddy said that the SCERT had sent a proposal to the school education commissioner and soon a decision on banning guides and workbooks would be taken by the government.