National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) books will be made available to students of all public and private schools for providing relief from buying text books at steep prices. The choice should be available and the option should be given to school students, Secretary of the Union School Education and Literacy Ministry, Anil Swarup said on the sidelines of an Associated Chambers of Commerce (ASSOCHAM) programme on education in Kolkata.

"CBSE has 20,000 schools and 13 crore books are consumed by students. But while the maximum price of a NCERT book is Rs 50, that of a non-NCERT book goes upto Rs 300," he said. Elaborating, he said that while buying NCERT books the students of 20,000 schools spend Rs 650 crore but for non-NCERT publications, they will have to spend Rs 3,900 crores. "This is not a small margin. I am worried about the financial burden on the school children - there is no qualitative comparison."

He also added that orders will be sought from public and private schools in the NCERT website in the first week of August so that advance preparations are made and the entire supply chain is put in place. About reducing the burden of heavy school bags the secretary said "We are looking at it very seriously." On options to tackle the situation, he said one is the electronic option of digitising some of the books. The second option is splitting the academic year into two semesters, while the third option is to keep the books in school.