The State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) in Uttar Pradesh is preparing to introduce textbooks in local dialects, including Bhojpuri and Awadhi.

The books will be in four dialects — Braj, Bhojpuri, Bundelkhand and Awadhi. The new textbooks in local dialects are being given the name 'Sahaj' and only the Hindi sections in the books have been translated.

The new textbooks in these dialects were released by Primary Education Minister Satish Dwivedi at a review meeting on Wednesday and will be introduced by the end of this week in Classes 1 and 2 in Mathura, Gorakhpur, Lalitpur and Barabanki districts as a pilot project.

The decision was taken to give greater importance to colloquial languages and also to improve learning in children who use these dialects as their mother tongue.

Ajay Singh, joint director of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, who is spearheading this project, said: "The idea is to help students learn lessons in a language that is easy for them to understand.

"We have got 15 books printed in each language. In each of the four districts, 10 schools have been identified where these will be introduced."

Officials said that in Uttar Pradesh, teachers from one region are often posted in another region and are unable to reach out to students whose mother tongue is not known to them.

"To break the language barrier, we have transformed books from standard Hindi to local dialects. The content remains unchanged," Singh said.

The books also have a special feature to help in teaching. Teachers who are not familiar with the local dialect can scan a QR code for each lesson. This allows them to play an audio of the lesson for students who can listen and understand.