Bhubaneswar: Odisha Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi on Friday suspended four officials of the State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), including its former Director, following the submission of a committee report that investigated large-scale errors in school textbooks.

The action came after a committee headed by the Development Commissioner submitted its report to the CM on the mistakes found in school textbooks.

Acting on the committee's recommendations, the Chief Minister ordered the suspension of former Director of Teachers' Training and SCERT, Manoj Padhi, along with three Assistant Directors, Pralipta Mishra, Dilip Kumar Sahu and Bharati Tudu.

In addition, disciplinary proceedings have been initiated against six Assistant Directors: Bandita Pattnaik, Manas Ranjan Rout, Manoranjan Mahapatra, Dr Prashant Kumar Sahu, Manas Kumar Nayak and Dr Sudarshan Santara.

The government has also decided to implement all 14 recommendations made by the committee to prevent similar lapses in the future and improve the quality of school education.

Among the key measures, SCERT will maintain a master errata register to record textbook errors, ensure that corrected information reaches all students, and establish a dedicated Quality Assurance Cell to strengthen the textbook review process.

The government has also made it mandatory that no school textbook will be sent to the printing press without obtaining all necessary approvals related to language, illustrations, factual accuracy and printing quality.

Below are the 14 recommendations made by the committee.

Publish the Master Errata Register within seven days.

Provide replacement pages/reprinted inserts for serious errors.

Provide printed correction sheets to all students.

Declare the corrected PDF as the official teaching version.

Conduct immediate correction orientation for teachers.

Prepare a responsibility matrix for every error.

Issue show-cause notices and take necessary appropriate action against the DTP agency, printer, and approving authority.

Constitute a Textbook Quality Assurance Cell in SCERT.

Create subject-wise Curricular Area Groups and book-wise Textbook Development Committees on the NCERT pattern.

Introduce a four-proof system and final locked PDF mechanism.

Create a Public Errata Portal.

Provide for penalty, performance scoring, and blacklisting of printers/DTP vendors.

Conduct pilot testing for every new textbook.

In future, no textbook should go for printing without final academic, language, fact-image, and production clearance.