Odisha Textbooks Had 1,741 Errors After Rs 175 Crore Printing Spend
Odisha government tells Assembly that 1,741 errors were found in Classes 1 to 8 textbooks after Rs 175 crore was spent on printing and publication.
The Odisha government has told the state Assembly that 1,741 errors were identified in school textbooks for Classes 1 to 8 after the books had been printed and distributed. Around Rs 175 crore was spent on their printing and publication.
School and Mass Education Minister Nityanand Gond said the errors included 1,075 grammatical, typographical and spelling mistakes, along with five factual and conceptual errors. Another 661 suggestions were received for improving the textbooks.
Among the books affected, the Class 8 Science textbook had 294 errors, while the Class 7 Urdu book had 121. The Class 8 Sanskrit textbook had 114 errors, followed by 98 in Class 6 Social Science and 92 in Class 7 Sanskrit.
The government said revised editions are being prepared to correct the identified mistakes. It has also introduced additional fact-checking by subject and language experts during textbook preparation to reduce the chances of similar errors in future.
The Directorate of Teacher Education and the State Council of Educational Research and Training were responsible for preparing and publishing the books. After the mistakes came to light, the government suspended the then director and three assistant directors and initiated disciplinary proceedings against six other assistant directors.
After spending crores on textbooks, discovering thousands of errors after distribution is certainly not the kind of “edit” anyone wants to make to a school book.
