Court clears way for SNC textbooks

Express Tribune

16-05-2025

The Peshawar High Court has dismissed a writ petition filed by local publishers, effectively lifting a long-standing stay order and allowing the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board (KPTBB) to proceed with the adoption and printing of textbooks aligned with the Single National Curriculum (SNC) for classes IX to XII.
The verdict was delivered by a Division Bench comprising Justice Syed Arshad Ali and Justice Fahim Wali, who upheld the K-P government's decision to adopt textbooks developed under the supervision of the National Curriculum Council (NCC), Islamabad.
The writ petition, filed earlier this year by various local publishers, challenged the Provincial Cabinet's decision dated January 20, 2025, which approved the adoption of NCC-supplied textbooks.
The government had argued that the move would promote uniformity in education standards across the country and yield significant financial savings — estimated at Rs600 million annually — in royalties otherwise payable to local publishers.
The petitioners, represented by Advocate Jehanzeb Mehsud, contended that the government's decision undermined fair competition and violated the K-P Textbook Policy 2017. He argued that the policy requires textbooks to be procured through open advertisements and private publishers, and noted that other provinces had not followed the same route. He further claimed that the government's profit-sharing arrangement with NCC-approved publishers raised legal and ethical concerns.
Representing the TBB, Advocate Shumail Ahmad Butt refuted these claims, explaining that the development of textbooks by the NCC began in September 2023 through a nationwide, transparent process. Publishers from across Pakistan were invited to submit manuscripts, which were reviewed and shortlisted based on quality and adherence to the SNC.
Butt pointed out that Clause 3.2A of the 2017 Policy explicitly empowers the government to acquire manuscripts from alternative sources free of cost, bypassing the standard royalty-based procurement process. He stressed that this alternative model ensures quality, maintains regulatory oversight, and results in substantial financial savings without breaching any legal provisions.
He further argued that local publishers, having avoided national-level competition, were now attempting to derail a merit-based process through litigation. Additionally, he highlighted that the post-26th Amendment legal framework limits judicial interference in federally-coordinated curriculum decisions and emphasized that provincial bodies, including the Directorate of Curriculum and Teacher Education (DCTE), retain full authority to modify the content as needed for regional contexts.
After extensive arguments from both sides, the court ruled in favor of the government and TBB, paving the way for the printing and distribution of SNC-compliant textbooks in K-P.