Odisha textbook fiasco: Why a batch of school books was riddled with errors

The errors came to light after the Odisha School Education Programme Authority issued a 122-page letter, including a 115-page corrigendum

A Class V literature textbook published by the Odisha government tells students that infertile women can regain fertility by walking around the Sitabinji cave in Keonjhar district. 

 

Another textbook wrongly places Odisha’s famed Niyamgiri hills — home to the Dongria Kondh tribe — in Jharkhand.

 

Schoolchildren in Odisha can be forgiven for looking a bit confused these days. As the state undertakes its biggest school education overhaul in decades under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, textbooks for classes I to VIII have been found to be riddled with 1,678 spelling and grammatical mistakes, factual inaccuracies, distorted terminologies and conceptual errors

 

The discovery has exposed serious deficiencies in curriculum development, academic review and quality control.

 

As many as 55 textbooks in Odia language for subjects ranging from literature, social science, mathematics and geography to skill education, besides Hindi, Sanskrit, Urdu and English language books have been prepared for elementary education by the Directorate of Teacher Education and the State Council of Educational Research and Training (DTE and SCERT) under the Odisha Curriculum Framework for School Education 2025, in line with NEP 2020. A total of 29.6 million copies have been printed at a cost of around ~380 crore for 5.3 million students across 49,259 elementary schools (Classes I to VIII) in the state. 

 

The errors came to light after the Odisha School Education Programme Authority (OSEPA) issued a 122-page letter, including a 115-page corrigendum to all district education officers, directing teachers to use the corrections to ensure error-free classroom teaching. The letter has been reviewed by Business Standard. 

 

Dubious record

 

Educationists say this is the highest number of errors ever detected in government-issued school textbooks in India. Several chapters appear to have been translated literally from textbooks published by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), without adapting them to the pedagogical and linguistic context of Odia, making them confusing for both students and teachers.

 

In some cases, illustrations do not match the accompanying text, while elsewhere descriptions contradict established scientific principles. Chapters meant for social science have been placed in literature textbooks, and spiritual and historical references appear in mathematics books. 

 

Brahmananda Maharana, president of the All Odisha Primary School Teachers’ Association (AOPSTA), attributed the lapses to the apparent failure to develop original content, translation using AI tools, inadequate editorial review and poor proofreading.

 

What went wrong

 

Textbook errors are not uncommon. Every year, minor spelling mistakes or printing defects are spotted in school books across the country. What makes Odisha’s case extraordinary is not merely the scale, but also their nature and the way officials handled the issue.

 

Official sources said the unprecedented number of errors resulted from a hurried curriculum overhaul, insufficient time for manuscript preparation, faulty translation of NCERT content and a failure to strictly follow the prescribed textbook development process.

 

“The ambitious effort to simultaneously implement NEP 2020 and introduce an entirely new set of textbooks left very little time. All 55 books were produced in just 15 months,” said an official involved in the process.

 

The rush, sources said, was driven by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government’s decision to roll out the new curriculum soon after coming to power in Odisha in 2024. 

 

The government’s determination to roll out an entirely new set of textbooks within a year came at the cost of quality. Teachers and parents alleged that the compressed timeline led to extensive translations from NCERT textbooks and the use of material sourced from various sources such as Wikipedia.

 

Basudev Bhatta, president of the Parents Federation, argued that the nature of the mistakes and the inappropriate, distorted combinations of words resemble the contextual and factual errors sometimes produced by artificial intelligence (AI) tools when their outputs are not thoroughly reviewed by humans. “Some teachers said they used AI tools for translation. There must be an independent inquiry and accountability should be fixed on those responsible,” Bhatta said.

 

Official sources admitted AI was used to write the textbooks. However, experts emphasised that AI inputs, including translations, must be monitored by humans. 

 

Vivekananda Pani, co-founder of Bengaluru-based Reverie Language Technologies, said AI can be an excellent assistant for translation and drafting but remains dependent on the quality of training data. “Since we do not have professional communications in Odia, the availability of communication data with such vocabulary and context is limited. Reliance on AI trained on inadequate data is far more likely to produce errors,” he added.

 

Ashok Das, former vice-chairman of Odisha State Higher Education Council, said, “Indian languages have cultural references, local contexts and linguistic nuances that technology struggles to interpret correctly. AI may generate content for technical education, but factual or contextual accuracy cannot be guaranteed for other subjects.”

 

The process 

 

Textbook preparation usually follows a rigorous, multi-layered process involving curriculum design, manuscript development by subject experts, academic review, language editing, proofreading, pilot validation and multiple rounds of quality checks before printing. Initially, only a limited number of copies 

 

are printed for scrutiny. Mass printing begins only after the books receive the necessary approvals.

 

The errors found in Odisha’s textbooks suggest that several of these safeguards were either bypassed or diluted. Although the DTE and SCERT had constituted committees to monitor every stage of textbook preparation, the final output exposed a serious breakdown in quality-control.

 

“The newly introduced textbooks carry the names of a 24-member panel for syllabus and textbook review, besides the editorial board, scrutiny committee and subject experts. But such a huge number of errors shows these panels failed to carry out the checks and balances essential for textbook publishing,” said Satyakam Mishra, former director of higher education, Odisha.

 

While no official admitted on record that the prescribed process had been ignored, the recommendations of the high-level committee headed by development commissioner D K Singh, constituted to probe the fiasco on the orders of Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi, indicate that mandatory checks and approvals were either bypassed or inadequately followed.

 

As part of a 14-point corrective roadmap approved by the chief minister, the DTE and SCERT have been directed to introduce a four-stage proofreading process, implement a final locked-PDF mechanism before printing, conduct pilot testing of every new textbook and make multiple approvals mandatory for academic content, language, factual accuracy, illustrations and production quality.

 

The committee also said no textbook should be sent for printing without obtaining all prescribed clearances. It proposed structural reforms to the textbook preparation process, including the creation of a dedicated Textbook Quality Assurance Cell within SCERT to oversee drafting, review, editing and publication. Besides, it recommended constituting subject-wise curriculum groups and book-wise textbook development committees modelled on the system followed by NCERT.

 

Missing accountability

 

Facing mounting public outrage, the Odisha government moved swiftly to contain the damage by suspending four officials and initiating disciplinary proceedings against six others following the probe panel’s report. However, deeper questions about accountability remain unanswered.

 

Those suspended include the then director of DTE and SCERT Manoj Padhi and assistant directors Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu and Bharati Tudu.

 

Although disciplinary action has been initiated, it has raised more fundamental questions about accountability. How did hundreds of errors slip through multiple stages of drafting, editing, proofreading, expert review and final approval before making their way into classrooms? Why has no action been taken against members of the review committees and the authorities who gave the final approval for publishing error-ridden manuscripts?

 

Educationists have called for reprinting the books. “One of the objectives of the NEP is decentralisation of the process with a focus on broad-based region-specific curriculum. Such is the enormity of the errors that some of the chapters must be rewritten as simple spelling correction will not suffice. Students should not be taught factually incorrect, unscientific and illogical contents,” said Sachidananda Mohanty, former vice-chancellor Central University, Koraput.    

 

School and Mass Education Secretary N Thirumala Naik said the department has launched a comprehensive review of all reported errors with the help of subject experts. Corrected textbooks will be uploaded for expert feedback, and students will receive completely error-free books as soon as possible, he told journalists.

 

Meanwhile, the OSEPA has uploaded corrected and revised digital copies of the textbooks for students from Class I to V on its website and sought feedback from parents, teachers and academicians.