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Published : 01 Jan 2026, 11:09 AM
As the new academic year begins across Bangladesh, millions of secondary school students are returning to class without one essential item on their desks: their textbooks.
More than 59 million books for secondary and Ebtedayee madrasa students have yet to reach local distribution centres, even as classes began on Thursday.
This year, the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) set a target of printing and distributing 300 million textbooks for primary and secondary education. All of the work was assigned to local printing presses.
For pre-primary and primary students, the process is complete. Printing and distribution of 85.9 million textbooks for Grades 1 to 5 were finished on Dec 16, and the books have already been sent to schools.
The picture is different at the secondary level.
Of the 214.3 million books meant for secondary and Ebtedayee students, only 156.1 million had reached Upazilas by Wednesday night, leaving a shortfall of around 58 million copies as classes begin.
“We’ve managed to dispatch nearly 73 percent of the total. We are trying to send the remaining books to the Upazilas as quickly as possible. We hope to be able to deliver all the books by the 15th of January," said Prof Riyad Chowdhury, an NCTB member overseeing textbook production.
DELIVERY PROGRESS SO FAR
According to NCTB figures, 31.1 million of the 214.3 million books are for Ebtedayee students, while 183.2 million are for secondary education.
Mahmuda Khanam, the NCTB’s deputy distribution controller, said 156.1 million copies had been dispatched by Wednesday night. Of those, 126.5 million were for secondary students and 29.5 million for Ebtedayee students.
By then, more than 95 percent of Ebtedayee books and about 69 percent of secondary-level books had reached Upazilas.
Delivery has varied by grade.
By Wednesday night, just over 80 percent of Grade 6 textbooks had arrived at the Upazila level. For Grade 7, the figure stood at 58 percent. Grade 8 lagged further behind, with fewer than half of its books delivered.
Grade 9 saw stronger progress. More than 83 percent of its textbooks across three streams had already reached Upazilas.
Meanwhile, the NCTB said printing and binding of 85.9 million books for pre-primary and primary students had been completed and delivered by mid-December.
Public Relations Officer SM Asaduzzaman said all books for those levels had already been sent to individual schools. He expressed hope that pre-primary and primary students would receive their textbooks on the first day of the year.
WHY SECONDARY BOOKS ARE LATE
In recent years, students had grown used to receiving new textbooks on the first day of the school year. That did not happen last year, when political changes led to a return to the old curriculum and required extensive revisions.
As a result, secondary students waited until March to receive all their books.
To avoid a repeat, the NCTB planned to begin printing secondary-level textbooks in September. That plan did not materialise.
According to Asaduzzaman, the government procurement committee cancelled the first round of tenders for printing books for Grades 6, 7 and 8. This pushed the start of printing back by two months.
Printing of 214.3 million books for secondary and Ebtedayee levels eventually began in November, leaving too little time to deliver every textbook before the new school year began.
To help students during the delay, the NCTB published PDF versions of textbooks on its website before the academic year started. Asaduzzaman said digital versions of 647 textbooks, in both Bangla and English, are now available online for primary and secondary students.
