Bhubaneswar: The school and mass education department on Tuesday announced that students of Classes I to VIII will very soon get revised and error-free textbooks. On June 26, chief minister Mohan Charan Majhi had first told TOI about students receiving the new books.Addressing a press conference amid mounting criticism over thousands of errors in the newly-introduced textbooks, school and mass education secretary N Thirumala Naik said, “The department has initiated a comprehensive review of the reported mistakes with the help of subject experts and is expediting the process of printing revised editions. As announced earlier by the CM, students will receive completely new and error-free textbooks. The process of reviewing and correcting the errors is currently underway and we are taking the suggestions of academic experts for the purpose.”Naik added, “Once all the errors are comprehensively corrected, the revised textbooks will be uploaded on the websites of the school and mass education department and the Odisha School Education Programme Authority to invite suggestions from the public and academicians. After incorporating the feedback received, the final revised textbooks will be supplied to students as soon as possible.”Until the new books are distributed, teachers will continue teaching students with the help of corrected copies being provided through school headmasters and district education officers. Naik said that teachers will also undergo orientation training on the revised textbooks before they are introduced in classrooms.Earlier last month, over 1,600 grammatical and factual errors had been detected in the newly-introduced textbooks for Classes I to VIII in govt schools. The errors came to light after the textbooks were reviewed by the teachers once they were delivered to the schools. The delivery was delayed due to printing issues.The secretary maintained that the number of actual errors was ‘not as high as is being discussed publicly’. “Many of the issues relate to differences in spelling and the usage of certain Odia words rather than factual mistakes. Also, errors can be subjective. What may appear to be an error to one person may not necessarily be considered an error by another,” he told reporters.According to Naik, the language and grammatical aspects of the textbooks are being reviewed with reference to the Purnachandra Bhashakosha and other authoritative Odia dictionaries. “The department wants to ensure that every correction is academically sound before the revised books are printed,” he added.On June 30, it was reported that a corrigendum issued by the govt to fix the textbook mistakes ended up aggravating them. For example, a true-or-false exercise in one of the textbooks asked students to answer whether Sir Isaac Newton was a pilot? It was misread by the review panel as a wrong question as Newton was a mathematician and physicist, without realising the actual purpose of the question. “This has led to fresh blunders in the correction list itself, including the impression that the textbook described,” a senior govt official had said on June 30.Naik further assured that the ongoing review process would not affect classroom teaching and learning. The govt, he said, is making every effort to complete the exercise at the earliest so that students receive the corrected textbooks without further delay.