The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has failed to meet even the delayed timeline it had set to provide textbooks to students of Classes V and VIII this year, which many academics said was partly because of layers of RSS scrutiny to check for content that might go against the government.

The textbook body introduced new books for Classes III and VI last year. It had announced that new books for Classes IV, V, VII and VIII would be introduced in 2025-26. Last year, the books for both classes were delayed.

This year, the NCERT released some of the textbooks for Classes IV and VII. It had said textbooks for Class VIII would be available on June 20 and those for Class V on June 15. Till Thursday, English and Hindi textbooks for Class V and Class VIII were available in limited stores. The PDF versions are not available on the NCERT website.

NCERT officials at the sale counter on its campus said that textbooks for mathematics, science and social science for these two classes were expected to be available by July 14.

Academics aware of the current process of writing textbooks said publication was getting delayed because of layers of scrutiny “to check any remotely anti-government material”. They said NCERT faculty members were not adequately involved in the preparation of new textbooks as experts were mostly chosen from outside institutions.

“After the experts submit the content, a project group comprising certain people with links to the RSS goes through the texts and suggests changes. The material is then scrutinised by select academics, some of whom are again from the RSS, over a prolonged period of time. They suggest changes. This was never the process earlier. This is the reason for the delay,” said an academic. Another academic echoed him.

When new books were published in 2006 and 2008, textbook teams had curated the content and a textbook development committee cleared them.

A teacher at a Kendriya Vidyalaya here said the new academic session started on April 1 and the books were supposed to be available before that. The NCERT has uploaded on its website a six-week bridge programme for Classes V and VIII before the start of the academic session to help schools do some teaching-learning activities till the new books are released.

“There is no textbook for the bridge course. It lists activities to be done in class. The teachers are doing it dutifully. But children in India need a book for focused study. In the absence of it, the teaching-learning activities are not able to engage children properly,” said the teacher.

Ashok Agrawal, a member of the Court of Delhi University, criticised the NCERT for the failure to make textbooks available.

“Private schools somehow manage teaching-learning activities with textbooks from private publishers. Government school students are entirely dependent on NCERT books. The CBSE and a few state boards also use NCERT books. Delay in the release of books is a cruel joke on such children. It is a case of criminal negligence,” Agrawal said.