Maharashtra: All school subjects to be clubbed into four textbooks

Mumbai: With a view of reducing the weight of school bags, the state government has decided to club the textbooks of all the subjects of a particular class into mere four books, while inserting in them additional blank pages for note-taking.

The new textbooks, which will be introduced in the upcoming academic year 2023-24, will be made available to students at government and private-aided schools on an experimental basis.

Students at private unaided schools will continue to get the existing books. However, once the available stock of these books is exhausted, they will also get the new 'integrated' textbooks, though without the writing pages.

The move, which was announced earlier by the Education Minister Deepak Kesarkar, comes days after the government decided to withdraw the bilingual and integrated books rolled out to class 1 and 2 students by the former School Education Minister Varsha Gaikwad last. These books displayed the equivalent English text alongside the vernacular terms, and had components of different subjects including English, Marathi, Maths and activity-based learning.

According to a government resolution (GR) issued on Tuesday, the new changes were recommended by experts to lighten the book load and to provide writing space to students in rural areas, who are often deprived of necessary stationary. However, the new books will likely be costlier due to additional pages and rising cost of the paper.

There'll be two pages for note-taking after each chapter in the new books for classes 3 to 10, will the books for class 1 and 2 students will have more space for writing. The class 9 and 10 students will continue to have separate textbooks for optional subjects.