Government Schools Shall Soon Be Able to Source Books From the Mega Fair

In the present day, improving the standard of education has become of immense importance in India. As compared to the population, the number of schools are way too less. Alongside not everyone can study in private schools because of their high and exorbitant fees.

Hence, government schools also need to be as good and modern as the private ones. One of the basic necessities of a decent school, is its library. Library provides the students access to different types of books, novels, journals, papers etc. A good and diverse library is necessary for every school. With the help of a good library the students can explore and understand about their interests in a much better way. In furtherance of the same, the Delhi government has taken a drastic step in this field. It has been decided that a few representatives of the Delhi government schools shall be given the opportunity to visit a mega book fair in the next week where they will choose general reading books for their library. The fair shall display around 4,307 books for students ranging from class nursery to class 12^th. The motive behind this initiative is to bring up the procurement of books by the government schools on the same pedestal. The fair will showcase the publications of around 111 publishers from all over India. The representatives will be allowed to choose titles and place orders centrally with the Directorate of Education (DoE). A librarian of a government boys’ school commented that this system is way better than the system that existed earlier. Until last year, the schools were given money and they had the freedom to choose books from anywhere they wanted. This led to a lot of corruption by the school administration. In the new system, the payment will be made directly to the Directorate only, hence the incidence of occurrence of corruption becomes negligible. The senior secondary schools have been allotted Rs. 12,500 for procuring the books; the classroom libraries that have been constituted from class nursery to class 5 have been allotted Rs. 10,000 per section and the middle school libraries that have been constituted in almost 400 schools have been allotted Rs. 25,000 each. The total amount of funds that have been provided to the government schools sum upto Rs. 7.84 crore. The mega education fair was inaugurated by Education Minister, Shri. Manish Sisodia. At the inauguration he stated that it is immensely important for the libraries to be diverse and interesting in order to grab the attention of the kids. Also, the displays should be such that they instil the desire to read amongst the students.

By: Anuja Arora

Content: https://indianexpress.com/article/education/govt-schools-to-source-books-from-mega-fair-5527652/lite/