The Single National Curriculum (SNC) has been implemented for grades Pre-I to 5 from the 2021-22 school year. It is accompanied by model textbooks in various subjects for these grades. This booklet provides a page-by-page review of the three model textbooks prescribed for the Pre-I grade, the Mathematics, English, and Urdu Primers.

The Pre-I grade serves as the foundation on which the edifice of education is raised. It is therefore of utmost importance to carefully assess the quality of the textbooks used to lay that foundation. It is hoped that based on these detailed reviews parents and educators will be able to reach an informed opinion on the quality of the foundation being laid for raising our future generations. Because of its irreversible nature, education calls for a great deal of care and attention to ensure that the potential of students, and thereby of the nation, is realised to the full. This review is offered as a contribution to that objective.

Dr. Anjum Altaf, a member of the International Coalition for Education Reform in Pakistan (ICERP), obtained MA and PhD degrees from Stanford University. He was a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). He is the author of Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2019), More Transgressions: Poems Inspired by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (2021), and co-author (with Amit Basole) of Thinking with Ghalib: Poetry for a New Generation (2021).