Aazan Manzoor
Srinagar, Nov 6: In a major relief for students and parents, the Jammu and Kashmir government is set to begin distribution of free textbooks among students of government schools for classes 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 7th and 8th from Monday, with Education Minister Shameema Firdous scheduled to formally launch the exercise at a government school in Srinagar.
Speaking exclusively to the news agency JKNS, Education Minister Shameema Firdous said the distribution process would begin on Monday and is expected to be completed within a week.
“We will start distributing the books from Monday. Hopefully, the process will be completed within a week, and the books will be available in every school by the end of this month,” she said.
The Minister said textbooks for classes 3rd and 6th would take approximately another week, as some revised book titles for both the classes are in final stage of printing. These books will also be distributed once the consignements of pending titles reach JOBOSE headquarter in Srinagar.
Notably, this is the first time that free textbooks for the new academic session are scheduled to reach government school students across Jammu and Kashmir in November. Last year, the distribution process had started in December.
The development comes shortly after the commencement of the new academic session 2026–27 on November 2.
Earlier, JKBOSE Chairman Ghulam Hassan Sheikh had said that the Board was awaiting the consignment of revised textbooks for classes 3rd and 6th, prepared in accordance with the National Education Policy (NEP)-2020.
The revised textbooks have been developed by using majorly NCERT content and UT specific learning material in accordance with contextualization provisons laid down under NEP (JKNS)
