All schools will receive their free text books within two weeks time.

Education Minister Dr Mahendra Reddy says they have been distributing the books for the past three weeks and the remaining schools will get theirs soon.

Dr Reddy says apart from hard copies of text books, the Ministry also has copies downloaded on about four thousand five hundred flash drives.

“We have loaded all text books on those flash drives – we are now giving it to schools – 25 flash drives each to give it to students who can take it home and load it as well as we have got soft copies of all text books on homepage, which means that it is not that text books excess is not there but the hard copy there was a shortage.”

Dr Reddy says a shortage is also being faced as many students haven’t returned their copies from last year, while some books aren’t in good condition.

The Minister says a circular has also been sent to school heads that teachers should be using their text books to lessons so that classes aren’t affected.