New Delhi: With a view to making education more accessible to schoolchildren and reaching out to the unserved, the Andhra Pradesh government has now made all school textbooks available in soft copy (PDF) format on the school education department's website for the students to download and print them for their use.

As many as 371 e-books, 135 major and 218 minor, are available on the website. School Education Department Commissioner S Suresh Kumar said the textbooks cannot be used for commercial purposes.

The e-books on the website were launched by Education Minister Botcha Satyanarayana after releasing the intermediate examination results. Out of the 371 e-books, 353 have been uploaded on the website while the remaining 18 will be ready in a couple of days.

The students can also download the books by scanning the QR codes printed on the textbooks, giving freedom to get access on mobile phones or personal computers.

The Education Department Commissioner said everybody, including private and public schools, are free to download and print the e-books but commercializing or modifying them into guidebooks is prohibited and it is unlawful and punishable under the Copyright Act.

The Education Department has already distributed 4.8 crore textbooks to 42 lakh students from government schools free of cost and another 3.16 crore to 28 lakh students of private schools would be given away, which would now be supplemented by e-books.

Meanwhile in the intermediate examination results for the academic year 2022-23, 61 percent of first-year students and 72 percent of the second-year students who appeared for the examinations have passed.

More than 4.3 lakh students appeared for the first-year examinations and over 3.79 lakh appeared for the second-year examinations.

In both first-year and second year examinations, girls outshone boys; 65 percent girls cleared the exams to 58 percent boys in the first year and 75 percent girls to 68 percent boys in the second year.