Balbharti mulls over a proposal to publish workbooks

To ensure students from the state board get access to more learning resources, Balbharti, the state’s publishing bureau is mulling over a proposal to publish workbooks for all subjects across classes.

To ensure students from the state board get access to more learning resources, Balbharti, the state’s publishing bureau is mulling over a proposal to publish workbooks for all subjects across classes.

Balbharati

While a final decision is yet to be taken, Balbharti is exploring options of making more supplementary learning material available to students through its publications. “Currently, private publishers print workbooks across grades but there are several instances of errors in these books that have been reported in the past. Hence, we are checking the feasibility of creating workbooks for students which will give them enough supplementary learning material and practice content for each subject,” said Dinkar Patil, Director, Balbharti. The publishing bureau is also working on printing practical books for Mathematics and Science for the students of Classes 9 to 12.

Teachers said that the move would benefit a large number of students from the state board. “If implemented, it will be helpful for students who have to otherwise buy expensive workbooks and other reference material from private publishers. There will also be standardisation of material across schools in the state,” said the principal of a suburban school.

In 2012, the publishing bureau came up with a copyright policy to put an end to the commercialisation of education. Private publishers wanting to reproduce content from Balbharti textbooks can apply under three types of licences —print, tutorial and digital with a designated fee and can only publish content after they get an approval from the Balbharti to do so. Similarly, currently the bureau has PDF versions of textbooks for all classes and mediums hosted on its website for free download.