PESHAWAR: Though promoted to next grades, over seven million students of government and private schools in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are unable to purchase textbooks due to the lockdown enforced to stem the spread of novel coronavirus.

The government has already extended the closure of educational institutions across the province to prevent Covid-19 until May 31.

According to officials, only a few elite private schools have begun online classes for own students. However, the rest of schools both owned by the public and private sectors have such facility.

According to official statistics, around five million students are enrolled in government schools and 2.38 million in private ones across the province.

Official says different options under consideration for book distribution

The officials told Dawn that normally, the annual examinations began at the end of Feb and in first week of March, while the government schools declared exam results by March 31 and private ones by the middle of March.

They added that the students learned few chapters of every subject before the announcement of the summer vacation in June.

The officials said the crisis caused by the virus had disturbed the academic calendar and led to the closure of schools for two and a half months.

They said the duration of campus closure would be counted as the advance summer vacation.

“Now, students are promoted to the next grade but they have no books to be taught by the parents or tutors at home as they have not purchased books due to the continued lockdown in the province,” an official in the education department said.

Mohammad Qasim, a resident of Hayatabad, demanded of the government to allow bookshops to open for a brief time daily to supply books to promoted students.

“My son wastes time watching cartoons the whole day. We would have taught him at home had books been provided to him,” he said.

General Secretary of the School Officer Association Samiullah Khalil said the government should also decide how to distribute books among the millions of students enrolled in the government schools, which the government provided free of charge.

He said usually, the education department distributed free books among students at the start of the academic year in April.

A senior official in the education department told Dawn that different options were under discussion about how to distribute books among students.

“One option is to call students to schools for one or two days in the middle of April if the outbreak of Covid-19 stemmed to a satisfactory level but you cannot rule out harm to the students during the distribution of millions of books,” he said.

The official said the KP Text Book Board would complete book supply to the districts by April 7, while the district setup of the education department would supply books to the relevant circles for onward distribution among government schools.

He said the students of the private schools would be waiting for book purchase till opening of the markets at the end of the lockdown in the province.

Cantab Publisher chief editor Naeem Khalid told Dawn that he had uploaded the first chapters of all books published by his company on its website.

“I have also uploaded videos for the parents about how to teach their children at home,” he said, adding that such videos were also sharing with the parents through social media.

Mr Khalid said rest of the chapters of books developed in line with the national curriculum would be uploaded gradually and the parents from across the country could download them to teach children.

He said 90 per cent of the parents stayed indoors due to the continued lockdown, so such books would be very useful to save the time of their children.

Published in Dawn, April 2nd, 2020