Dec 02, Colombo: The Sri Lankan government has allocated Rs. 2.4 billion to provide free school text books for the students of government schools for the year 2013, Ministry of Education says.

The free school text books are being distributed to schools now and the official ceremony of the distribution of school text books will take place in Kandy Dharamaraja College, under the patronage of the Minister of Education Bandula Gunawardena on December 06.

Around 4.1 million school children benefit from the free school text books. According to the Ministry 37 million copies of 437 books for Grades 1 to 13 have been printed in all three languages -Sinhala, Tamil and English.

The government provides school text books free of charge to all government school students since 1978. Last year, the government spent 630 million rupees to provide free school text books for 2012.