Ministry completes 35 per cent books distribution

Dharma Sri Abeyratne

COLOMBO: The Education Ministry has distributed 35 per cent of the schools text books for 2008, Education Minister Susil Premajayantha said.

The Ministry has made arrangement to issue a single text book from this year to avoid delay in the text book distribution which is now in progress throughout 750 centres islandwide.

The Ministry will ensure that books will be handed over to the students on the same day of the commencement of the new term next year.

The distribution will take place in several stages the first of which has already been completed by the Education Publication Department. The text books based on the new syllabus will be distributed at the final stage which is to be completed on December 15.

Accordingly, twenty million copies under 336 titles written in Sinhala, Tamil and English will be distributed among four million students from grade 1 to 11.

The Ministry will dispatch 1.4 million books, required for the Jaffna District by `Indramali' and `Marks' ships.

The book distribution will be carried out in Jaffna through 19 centres.

The text books for the Eastern Province have already been sent to distribution centres. Education Publications Department Commissioner General N. Dharmasena said the Government has paid Rs. 1,100 million to publication institutions for the printing of school text books this year.

In addition, the Education Publications Department will directly distribute school text books to National Schools and the schools which have over 2000 student population.