LAHORE:Punjab Curriculum and Textbook Board’s failure to ensure availability of textbooks in the market and in government schools, particularly for elementary-level classes, before the start of annual summer vacation from June 1 to July 31 has deprived students of mandatory learning resource during the ongoing summer break.
Unlike most of the private schools in Punjab where new academic year had begun in mid-April, the new academic year for students of government school will begin after the ongoing summer vacation from August 1. This means students of private schools, following the PCTB textbooks for studies, would suffer the most as they have been without books since mid-April.
It is pertinent to mention here that owing to the failure of School Education Department (SED) Punjab to implement its own orders there is currently no uniformity vis-à-vis the start of new academic year for schools in the province.
In January this year, the SED Punjab had extended academic year from March 31, 2022 to May 31, 2022 with clear direction that next academic session for the year 2022-2023 will be observed from August 1, 2022 to March 31, 2023. However, many private schools ignored the notification and started their academic year from mid-April.
As far as unavailability of textbooks is concerned, there is no textbook of any subject in the market for private schools or for the students of government schools for classes 6, 7 and 8 while some textbooks of class 9 including that of Islamiat subject is also unavailable.
Rana Liaqat of Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) said since no textbooks were available for classes 6, 7 and 8 the students of these classes were assigned general summer vacation work to keep them busy during the summer break. He said the government schools had been ensured availability of textbooks of elementary classes by mid July. He said in some cases the teachers also arranged old textbooks from students moved to next classes to help the students.
He said students of primary and classes 9 and 10 were lucky as many of their textbooks were available before the start of summer break. A government schoolteacher, seeking anonymity, said the students were likely face a huge academic loss as they would waste precious time during the ongoing summer vacation. “The start of new academic year from August does not mean to leave students without textbooks for whole two months especially at a time when they already faced huge learning losses owing to COVID-19 recently,” he added.
The News could not reach PCTB Managing Director Dr Farooq Manzoor despite repeated attempts on his cell phone. However, an official, seeking anonymity, said textbooks of classes 6, 7 and 8 would be available by the end of this month.