The education bureau in Ruicheng county, Shanxi province, was found by local police to have illegally published 54,000 copies of textbooks, xinhuanet.com reported on Wednesday.

In early April, parents of some local primary school students reported to the police that the textbooks their children used at school were made of torn-out paper and the text was illegible. Local enforcement officers of the county investigated and found that the primary school textbooks for Chinese literature and calligraphy were printed without issue numbers or publishing dates. They had been printed at local printing factories connected with the county’s education bureau without permission from the provincial education bureau.

The local education bureau is required to hand in all illegal textbooks before June 4 and the case is under further investigation.