Dhaka, Jan. 1 -- As the new academic year begins across Bangladesh, millions of secondary school students are returning to class without one essential item on their desks: their textbooks.

More than 59 million books for secondary and Ebtedayee madrasa students have yet to reach local distribution centres, even as classes began on Thursday.

This year, the National Curriculum and Textbook Board (NCTB) set a target of printing and distributing 300 million textbooks for primary and secondary education. All of the work was assigned to local printing presses.

For pre-primary and primary students, the process is complete. Printing and distribution of 85.9 million textbooks for Grades 1 to 5 were finished on Dec 16, and the books have already ...