Cambridge Dreams, Missing Textbooks

The full numbers

The Ministry of Education and Skills Development (MoESD), under Education Minister Yeezang De Thapa, introduced the Cambridge-aligned National School Curriculum for Classes 9 and 11 starting the 2026 academic year.

• Textbook scope: 25 titles; 240,000 total copies required
• Initial plan: outsource printing to international printers (proven capacity)
• Decision change: awarded to two major local printing firms to support the Bhutanese printing industry — first time these firms had done a design-and-print textbook model
• Result: delays; textbooks not delivered to schools by start of academic year
• Interim measure: soft copies distributed to schools at start of year; three-month feedback window from teachers/students to catch errors before mass printing (to avoid Nu millions in error-correction cost)
• Rural challenge: schools in remote dzongkhags lack laptops, internet, or even allow student phones — soft copies are functionally inaccessible
• For PP–Class 8: draft textbooks under review; design and layout phase expected July–August 2026
• For Classes 10 and 12: teachers still preparing textbooks; final versions expected end-May 2026, then several rounds of expert review
• Full Cambridge rollout deferred to 2027 — government’s revised commitment in NA, 19 May 2026
• Budget for curriculum rollout (FY 2026-27): Nu 289 million for Cambridge-aligned curriculum implementation
• Budget for teacher development: Nu 385.1 million additional
• Total curriculum-related allocation: Over Nu 674 million

Imagine this

A Class 9 student in a remote village in Dewathang-Gomdar opens her notebook on day one of the academic year, 2026. She has been told her curriculum is “Cambridge-aligned” — globally rigorous, internationally recognised, the same framework that prepares students for top universities worldwide. What she does not have on her desk: a textbook. The school has soft copies on a USB drive somewhere in the staff room, but the school’s two laptops are shared among teachers for administrative work, the internet is unreliable, and student phones are not permitted in class. She asks her teacher how the new curriculum will work. The teacher (one of the affected by the same wave of pedagogical change) explains: we’ll teach from the Class 9 syllabus document; questions will be answered when textbooks arrive; soft copies are available for those who can access them. The student is going to learn Cambridge-aligned science without a Cambridge-aligned science textbook. Three hundred kilometres away in Thimphu, the MP for her constituency (Tshering Penjor, Dewathang-Gomdar) raises the issue in the National Assembly: “Assessments might have been done in urban schools, but in rural schools, there are issues such as not enough computers, no good internet, and a shortage of teachers.” MP Lam Dorji (Wamrong, Trashigang) adds: “Learning materials in soft copy would not benefit students in remote schools. They do not have laptops, nor can they take their phones to school.” The Education Minister responds: assessments were done; phased approach adopted; only ~20% alignment needed for Classes 9-12; existing textbooks can still be used. By 2027, the full curriculum will be in place. By 2027 — when the Class 9 student will be in Class 11.

Where this came from

The Cambridge alignment was part of a broader curriculum modernisation programme — the recognition that Bhutan’s traditional curriculum was no longer competitive with international university entry standards. The 13th FYP carries through significant education-reform commitments; the FY 2026-27 budget allocated Nu 34.935 billion for education, with capital investment of Nu 3.038 billion focused on 20 Phase I Central School clusters, an International School in Thimphu, and a STEM School at Drukgyel HSS. The textbook-printing decision to support local industry — rather than outsource to proven international printers — was made on industrial-policy grounds. The unintended consequence: the local printers had never done design-and-print textbooks at this scale; the learning curve consumed the delivery window. The soft-copies-as-interim was a reasonable backstop in urban schools. It became a structural inequity in rural schools where the ICT infrastructure to use soft copies does not exist.

Why this matters now

The Cambridge curriculum rollout is a flagship MoESD initiative. The textbook gap exposes a recurring pattern in Bhutanese policy: ambition at the curriculum level without commensurate scaffolding at the delivery level. The pattern shows up in:

• Health (Multi-Disciplinary Super-Specialty Hospital announced before sufficient specialists trained)
• ICT (Digital Drukyul programme broad ambition; rural connectivity still patchy)
• Civil service (E2B 10X scholarship initiative; meanwhile PGDE Dzongkha teachers terminated)
• Tourism (high-value low-impact policy; institutional capacity ~3,800 operators for 200,000 tourists per paradox #10) The textbook story is small, but the pattern is structural. The next generation of Bhutanese students will be the first to be educated on Cambridge alignment. Whether they actually get Cambridge-quality preparation depends on whether the delivery infrastructure catches up to the curriculum policy.

What it should be

• Curriculum reforms should be accompanied by fully resourced delivery infrastructure — printing, ICT, teacher training, rural connectivity — BEFORE the curriculum is introduced
• Local-industry support is a legitimate policy goal but should not compromise core education delivery; international printers can be brought in for first cycle while local printers build capacity
• Rural-urban delivery gaps should be assessed BEFORE curriculum rollout, not exposed as the rollout fails
• The “soft copies as backstop” framework only works in schools with ICT; the schools without ICT need hard copies on day one

How others do it

• Finland — curriculum reforms are years in preparation; textbooks, teacher training, and delivery infrastructure all complete before introduction
• Singapore — Ministry of Education builds and tests curriculum materials in collaboration with publishers; rollout is synchronised with all delivery channels
• Estonia — full digital-first transformation BUT only after rural broadband was at >95% coverage; the delivery infrastructure preceded the policy
• Bhutan: introduces Cambridge curriculum first; the textbooks, the rural ICT, the teacher capacity follow — or don’t

The question we should be sitting with

If we believe in Cambridge alignment for our students — and we should — what does it say that we couldn’t print the textbooks in time for the first academic year, and that the soft copies we distributed are unusable in the rural schools that need them most? What does it tell us about the rigour of our policy-to-delivery pipeline?

Update May 2026 — the GST Amendment Bill admission: On 18 May 2026, Finance Minister Lyonpo Lekey Dorji introduced the Goods and Services Tax (Amendment) Bill of Bhutan 2026 as a Money Bill in the National Assembly. The Bill, taking effect on the day of introduction, proposes 22 new BTC Code exemptions under Schedule IV C of the GST Act 2020 — specifically targeting:

1. Edible cooking oils (19 new items): soya-bean, groundnut, olive (and blends), palm, sunflower, safflower, cotton seed, coconut, palm kernel, rape, colza, mustard, other fixed vegetable oils, hydrogenated vegetable fats. Stated rationale: “These oils are widely consumed by households across Bhutan and form a significant portion of the essential food basket. The proposed exemption is intended to reduce the cost of a basic dietary staple, particularly benefiting lower-income families for whom edible oil accounts for a higher share of food expenditure.”
2. Rice (2 additional varieties): husked brown, red, semi/wholly milled rice.
3. Mobility aids (1 additional category): motorized/automated wheelchairs (BTC Code 8713.90.00) supplementing the already-exempted manual wheelchairs.

What this means structurally: Within 7 months of GST rollout, the Finance Minister has had to amend the regime to exempt basic foods that GST was imposing 5% on. The Bill’s own language admits that GST design choices have hurt lower-income food affordability. This is the legislative confirmation that the editorial position of The Bhutanese — that GST should be substantially reformed — has now reached the level of being addressed by the regime’s own architect.