Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan will launch the nationwide distribution of textbooks and free school uniforms for the academic year 2026-27 at St. Mary’s High School on February 13. Mary’s Higher School, Pattom.
General Education Minister V Sivankutty said at a press conference here on Tuesday that the go-ahead has been given for 3.5 billion Volume I textbooks and 1.9 billion Volume II textbooks for classes I to X.
Kerala Books and Publications Society (KBPS) has completed printing of 79 million textbooks, of which 55 million have been transported to textbooks.
The distribution of textbooks will be completed by the end of May, the minister said, stressing that the distribution of textbooks began three months before the start of the next academic year in June.
He said uniforms had to be distributed to more than 8 lakh students as per details available on Kerala Infrastructure and Technology for Education (KITE) website.
Texts Plus one
Mr. Sivankutty said that the new textbooks will be for the students of XI. classes available from next year as part of the curriculum review process. After 15 years, the upper secondary textbook was being revised. A meeting of the State Curriculum Steering Committee approved 41 textbook titles prepared by the State Council for Educational Research and Training (SCERT). These included all languages, computer science, journalism, home science, Gandhian studies and electronics.
The minister said a decision on how to use the 44 titles of National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) textbooks in higher secondary education will be taken after they are published.
SCERT had earlier released additional textbooks in four subjects as a result of major cuts in textbooks by NCERT.
New textbooks of class XI have been prepared this year ahead of the SSLC exams, the minister said, adding that the new textbooks will be released soon.
A total of 20 million textbooks needed to be printed and distributed, the minister said.
Published – 10 Feb 2026 20:28 IST