Amid the controversy surrounding the errors in school books, several teachers and educationists have raised concerns over the quality and contextual relevance of the new textbooks. TOI looks at the process through which the books were preparedAs the Odisha govt faces heat over the thousands of factual and grammatical errors in the newly-introduced textbooks for Classes I to VIII, teachers across the state have raised broader concerns over the quality and contextual relevance of the new textbooks.The Directorate of Teacher Education and the State Council of Educational Research and Training (TE and SCERT), Odisha, had prepared the 55 textbooks for Classes I to VIII introduced in govt schools for the 2026-27 academic session. While the corrigendum issued by SCERT addresses factual inaccuracies, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, educators say the problems go far beyond these, pointing to poor localisation of content, inaccurate representation of Odisha’s culture and the inclusion of material they consider pedagogically inappropriate.When launching the books, the state govt had said they would reflect Odisha’s cultural heritage while aligning with the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. However, teachers say several textbooks fall short of that objective.One such example is the Class VI ‘Sahitya Sudha’ textbook, which devotes four pages to Chhau dance and its Odisha connection. Yet, the main lesson contains no visual representation of Odisha’s distinctive Mayurbhanj Chhau tradition. Instead, it carries three photographs of masked performers resembling the Purulia and Seraikela Chhau traditions practised in West Bengal and Jharkhand. “While there is one small picture of Mayurbhanj Chhau at the end of the worksheet related to the lesson, it does not appear in the chapter itself,” Sanghamitra Pati, a teacher from Cuttack, said.Unlike the Purulia and Seraikela styles, Mayurbhanj Chhau is performed without masks, with dancers expressing emotions through facial expressions and eye movements.Teachers have flagged similar concerns in other subjects as well. The Class III mathematics textbook ‘Ganita Mela’ features an illustration said to depict the annual Joranda Mela, the spiritual congregation of the Mahima Dharma sect in Dhenkanal district. Teachers, however, say the image bears no resemblance to the three-day gathering of Mahima monks and devotees. “The Odia textbook has been adapted from the NCERT ‘Math Mela’ textbook for Class III. The illustration used for Surajkund Mela in the NCERT textbook has simply been retained, with only the chapter title changed to Joranda Mela. If the objective was to develop textbooks rooted in Odisha’s culture, the illustration should have reflected Joranda Mela instead of Surajkund Mela,” Samar Das, another teacher, said.Teachers said these were not isolated lapses. While they welcomed the adoption of NCERT books developed under the NEP framework, they argued that the content had not been adequately contextualised to Odisha’s history, culture and social realities.“Adapting NCERT books is not wrong. But while preparing textbooks for Odisha’s students, due care should have been taken to contextualise the content to the state’s history and culture. That has not happened, despite the numerous expert committees constituted and the money spent on the exercise,” Brahmananda Maharana, president of the State Primary Teachers’ Association, said. According to Maharana, the lack of contextualisation also contributed to several glaring mistakes already identified in the textbooks, including a photograph of Karnataka’s Virupaksha Temple at Hampi being wrongly identified as the Sun Temple and the Karnataka Vidhana Soudha being captioned as the Odisha Legislative Assembly.Even the corrigendum issued to fix the mistakes ending up aggravating them. While the corrigendum claimed to have identified 1,678 errors, officials now say the actual number may be less.The controversy has also raised questions about the process through which the textbooks were produced. In Jan 2025, the state school and mass education department had announced that NEP will be implemented at the school level from April 1, which marked the beginning of the 2025-26 academic session, and the National Curriculum Framework with local contextualisation will be adopted as the State Curriculum Framework (SCF) for Odisha. The department had also informed back then that it is developing new textbooks by translating and adapting them from NCERT materials to reflect the unique local needs, heritage and culture of Odisha. Students received the books in mid-June this year.Educationists argue that the compressed timeline left little room for development of books and rigorous review. “As many as 55 new textbooks were translated, conceptualised, written, edited and printed within a matter of months following the introduction of the SCF. By comparison, the NCERT generally takes one to three years to develop a single textbook, with multiple rounds of writing, peer review, expert consultation, field testing and proofreading before publication,” educationist R N Panda said.On July 1, the school and mass education secretary, N Thirumala Naik, said that, as announced by CM Mohan Charan Majhi, students will soon receive new and error-free textbooks. There was, however, no clarity on whether the revised textbooks would adequately incorporate Odisha-specific context wherever required