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There is something almost Shakespearean about the academic year Class IX students have been handed in 2026. The year began with much ado about languages.

On April 9, CBSE issued a notification stating that R3, the third language, would not apply at the Class IX level until the 2029–30 academic session. Barely five weeks later, on May 15, it issued another circular requiring Class IX students to study three languages from July 1, with at least two being Indian languages. The abrupt change left students, parents and schools scrambling to understand what it meant for children already in the system. It eventually led to a legal challenge.

Parents (like me) raised a fairly simple question: why should children already in classes VII to IX become collateral participants in a policy transition introduced after their academic journey and their choice of a foreign language had already begun in Class VI?

On June 29, CBSE issued detailed guidelines on the three-language policy and provided transition arrangements for existing students of Classes VII–IX. There was some relief, at least for those of us who had spent weeks trying to make sense of the policy.

But alongside the language-policy maze, another problem was quietly gathering: the textbooks.

The new Class IX curriculum came with a new set of NCERT textbooks. They did not all arrive when the academic session began in April. The books arrived piecemeal, with Part I of Mathematics and Social Science among those that reached students later.

By September, parents were asking a rather more basic question: where were Part II of the Mathematics and Social Science textbooks?

The answer was that they were still to arrive, with Mathematics Part II scheduled for release on September 21 and Social Science Part II on September 30.

Parents had formally written to the Union education ministry and CBSE about the delay. The issue was also reported independently, with parents and school heads pointing to the difficulties of planning and completing the revised........

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