Odisha spent Rs 175 crore printing school books — then found 1,741 errors

The Odisha government recently announced that errors were discovered in the textbooks designed for students in classes 1 to 8, with the printing and publication of these books costing Rs 175 crore. State School and Mass Education Minister Nityanand Gond disclosed that the textbooks contained a total of 1,741 errors, including 1,075 grammatical, typological, and spelling mistakes, as well as five factual and conceptual errors.

Gond also mentioned that 661 recommendations were provided to enhance the textbooks. Among the affected textbooks, the class 8 Science book had 294 errors, while the class 7 Urdu, class 8 Sanskrit, class 6 Social Science, and class 7 Sanskrit books had 121, 114, 98, 92 errors respectively. The minister assured that corrective measures were already in place, such as fact-checking by subject and language specialists.

To prevent similar issues in the future, the Directorate of Teacher Education and State Council of Educational Research and Training (TE&SCERT) has been assigned the responsibility of textbook publication and printing. However, after the textbooks were printed and distributed, the government had to take stern action, suspending the then director and three assistant directors, and initiating disciplinary proceedings against six other assistant directors.