ISLAMABAD: After a delay of a few weeks, the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) on Friday completed the supply of textbooks to schools in the federal capital.

The academic session was started on April 7 and books were not provided on opening day.

The FDE kept supplying books to schools in phases and the delivery process was completed on Friday.

“We provided all missing titles of various classes to our main supply centre for onward distribution to schools,” said an official of FDE. He said that on Monday, the centre will provide books to schools.

He added that the majority of the titles had already been provided to schools.

“Today, we provided missing titles including Urdu and English of prep class, Islamiat for class one and class 8th, home economics for class 9th etc, and supply of books on part of FDE has been completed,” the official said.

This year, the FDE changed books from class one to five. It is relevant to note here that every year, the FDE, which supervises over 430 schools and colleges with federal government funding provides free-of-cost books to all students from class prep to class 10th.

The FDE this year got the books published by the National Book Foundation – which is also a subsidiary of the Ministry of Education.

A school teacher said that ideally, the supply of books should have been completed before the start of the academic session.

However, FDE officials said that this year, new books were printed and supply was completed within two weeks after the start of the academic session.

He said every school maintains a book bank and in the absence of new books, students are provided old books.

“From the next academic session, the books will be available at the start of the academic session,” he said.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2025