Odisha suspends 4 SCERT officials after 1,700 mistakes in school textbooks: Govt

ODisha chief government minister Mohan Charan Majhi on fri suspended foursome senior officials of the tell Council of Educational explore and Training (SCERT) and initiated disciplinary proceedings against six other employees in connection with mistakes found in textbooks prescribed for Classes 1 to 8 for the 2026–27 academic session.The state government suspended former SCERT director Manoj Padhi and assistant directors Pradipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu and Bharati Tudu after an inquiry committee headed by development commissioner D.K. Singh was constituted following Majhi’s order for a probe into errors found in school textbooks.The government has also initiated disciplinary proceedings against six assistant directors — Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjana Mahapatra, Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak and Sudarshan Santara.The government has accepted all 14 recommendations made by the inquiry committee to overhaul the textbook preparation and review process. Among the measures are the creation of a Master Errata Register to record and track corrections, mandatory communication of all corrections to students, and the establishment of a dedicated Quality Assurance Cell within SCERT to strengthen quality control.The government has also directed that no textbook be sent for printing without mandatory approvals on language, content, illustrations and printing quality. According to the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), the reforms are intended to improve academic standards and ensure greater accountability in textbook preparation.The action follows widespread outrage after the school and mass education department detected errors in textbooks for Classes I to VIII during an internal review conducted after their distribution.Brahmananda Maharana, president of Odisha’s Primary Teachers Association, said 1,678 errors were identified in the textbooks, ranging from spelling mistakes and factual inaccuracies to incorrect names of eminent personalities and wrong photographs. A photograph of the Karnataka Legislative Assembly in place of that of Odisha’s is among the mistakes flagged. Physicist Isaac Newton was described as a “great pilot”, while the UNESCO World Heritage Site at Hampi in Karnataka was misidentified as the Konark Sun Temple in Odisha.The mistakes raised questions about the vetting and quality-control mechanisms involved in the preparation of the textbooks. With the academic session underway, officials said the textbooks need to be corrected as soon as possible.The SCERT, which prepared the textbooks, initially termed them an “experimental edition” and described the mistakes as “minor”. It subsequently issued a corrigendum to schools, directing teachers to manually correct the errors during classroom instruction.Opposition parties, the Biju Janata Dal and the Congress, called the episode a “national embarrassment” and demanded the withdrawal of the books.The textbook errors have come at a time when the state has significantly expanded textbook production. According to estimates by the Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA), nearly 2.98 crore textbooks were printed for the 2026–27 academic session, up from around 2.70 crore in the previous year.