Every year, a few weeks before a new session starts, the same argument returns to Jammu and Kashmir's private schools: who decides which books and notebooks a child must carry, and who profits from them? Two Greater Kashmir reports, filed from Srinagar on 26 and 30 October 2026, put parents' complaints on the record. They are about schools in the Kashmir division, but the rule they invoke applies across the Union Territory, so Jammu families have a stake in the answer.
What the rule says
According to the 30 October report, the Jammu and Kashmir Board of School Education Act, 1975 requires private schools affiliated to JKBOSE to use Board-prescribed textbooks from primary to Class 12. The same report says the Board directed its sub-offices in March 2024 to inspect schools for compliance with textbook norms and warned of action against violators, and that the government has previously told private schools not to force parents to buy textbooks or uniforms from a particular shop.
What parents say
These are parents' accounts as reported, not findings. The reports do not name the schools involved, and neither carries a response from a school or a bookseller.
- Some affiliated schools still prescribe extra books from private publishers, sold only at selected shops.
- For primary classes, parents put the full JKBOSE-prescribed set at about ₹700, and a single extra private-publisher book at ₹500 to ₹600. A Cambridge-curriculum set was put at ₹7,000 to ₹8,000.
- Frequent edition changes, parents say, stop books being passed down to younger siblings.
- On stationery, parents compared a school-branded 250-page notebook at an MRP of ₹120 with a 240-page notebook from another brand at ₹100, and said booksellers give a 20 per cent discount on other brands but none on the school-branded copies.
- Parents asked for complete book lists to be published before the session begins and for books to be sold in the open market.
Some parents also alleged that arrangements exist between schools, booksellers and publishers. The report offers no evidence for that, and we repeat it only as a claim that parents want investigated.
What is not known
The reports do not say how many schools are affected, whether any inspection under the 2024 direction found a violation, or what the schools' reasons are for their book and stationery choices. They also note that the Fee Fixation and Regulation Committee has been without a chairman for over two months. The Education Minister was not available for comment on the 30 October report, and no fresh official response on stationery pricing is reported.
What a family can do
- Ask the school, in writing, for the complete book list and whether each title is JKBOSE-prescribed.
- Check the Board's own prescribed list before buying anything extra, and ask where a non-prescribed book can be bought if it is not sold in the open market.
- Compare an item's MRP with an equivalent from another brand before buying school-branded stationery.
- If a school appears to breach the Board's norms, raise it with the School Education Department or JKBOSE. The reports do not describe a specific complaint route, so check the official offices for current contact details.
The principle at stake is simple and does not depend on who is right in any one school: a rule that books come from a public list only protects families if the list is published early and enforced visibly. Until the Board or the department says more, parents are the only source on the record, and readers should weigh the claims accordingly.
Sources: Greater Kashmir, 30 October 2026; Greater Kashmir, 27 October 2026. Photo: Wikimedia Commons (Paul La Porte, CC BY-SA 3.0), a file photo of Jammu city, not of any school named in the reports.
