Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Friday suspended four officials, including former Director of the Directorate of Teacher Education and SCERT, over the large-scale errors in newly revised textbooks for Classes 1 to 8.
The errors, which include factual inaccuracies such as describing Isaac Newton as a pilot, misidentifying the Hampi temple as the Konark Sun Temple, and placing images of other states’ landmarks or locations incorrectly for Odisha contexts, sparked widespread concern among teachers, parents, and the public as the new academic session began.
Acting swiftly after a high-level probe committee headed by the Development Commissioner submitted its report, the Chief Minister placed Manoj Padhi, former Director of Teacher Education and SCERT, along with Assistant Directors Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu, and Bharati Tudu, under suspension. Departmental disciplinary proceedings have also been initiated against six other Assistant Directors: Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjan Mohapatra, Dr Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak, and Dr Sudarshan Santara.
The textbooks were prepared by the Directorate of Teacher Education and SCERT as part of curriculum revisions aligned with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. The committee’s findings highlighted serious oversights in content review, fact-checking, and quality control processes during preparation and printing.
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To address the immediate impact on students and prevent future issues, Chief Minister Majhi has approved the full implementation of 14 key recommendations from the committee, aimed at improving the quality of school education and preventing recurrence of textbook errors. These include:
1. Publish the Master Errata Register within seven days.
2. Provide replacement pages/reprinted inserts for serious errors.
3. Provide printed correction sheets to all students.
4. Declare the corrected PDF as the official teaching version.
5. Conduct immediate correction orientation for teachers.
6. Prepare a responsibility matrix for every error.
7. Issue show-cause notices and take necessary appropriate action against DTP agency, printer, and approving authority.
8. Constitute a Textbook Quality Assurance Cell in SCERT.
9. Create subject-wise Curricular Area Groups and book-wise Textbook Development Committees on the NCERT pattern.
10. Introduce a four-proof system and final locked PDF mechanism.
11. Create a Public Errata Portal.
12. Provide for penalty, performance scoring, and blacklisting of printers/vendors.
13. Conduct pilot testing for every new textbook.
14. In future, no textbook should go for printing without final academic, language, fact-image, and production clearance.
With these reforms intended to strengthen the textbook publication process and ensure that students receive error-free learning materials, the Chief Minister’s Office reiterated a zero-tolerance policy toward any negligence affecting children’s education.
