Rewriting text book printing procedure

By N. Dilshath Banu

The Education Ministry will from next year adopt a new procedure in printing text books to overcome complications prevalent at present.

“We will have subject-wise committees for each subject to select authors for preparing text books, rather than allow the printers to do the selection,” Education Ministry secretary, Ariyaratne Hewage said.

This decision to change the present system had been taken amid allegations that quality text books were not being published under the open tender procedure where instead of quality the lowest bidder was given priority.

However, the Education Publication Department Commissioner N. Dharmasena denied these allegations.

“National Institute of Education sends syllabuses to the publication department which then calls for tenders for printing text books. The printers obtain the services of writers from within the education sector. When the books are sent to us, we submit them for evaluation before deciding on the price,” Mr. Dharmasena said.