The beginning of the school year under threat: half of the textbooks for grade 8 have not reached schools
26 August 09:18
As of 19 August, Ukrainian schools have not received half of the planned textbooks for eighth-graders, which poses a threat of disrupting the start of the school year. The head of the Verkhovna Rada committee for education, science and innovations, Serhiy Babak, said about this situation with the delivery of textbooks, "Komersant Ukrainian" reported.
According to the MP, the state budget allocated more than 1.4 billion hryvnias for textbooks this year. For these funds it was planned to provide textbooks to 8.7 million eighth-graders of the New Ukrainian school, as well as to print 30 thousand textbooks in Braille and almost 312 thousand textbooks for children with special educational needs.
“However, the reality turned out to be much worse than the plans. In general, of the 8.7 million planned textbooks, only 4,462,691 copies have so far reached schools, that is, only 51.18%.”
– reports Babak.
According to the head of the committee, the work of the new delivery mechanism, when textbooks were supposed to come directly from publishers to schools, has been particularly unsuccessful.
“According to the new mechanism, the situation is as follows: out of 2.8 million copies delivered so far 307 thousand (that’s 10.64%).”
– he notes.
Even the traditional method of delivery through regional book bases works with big failures, the MP says. Although 90% of textbooks were delivered to the bases, only 78.6% of the required number actually reached schools.
“So far, almost every fifth textbook has not reached schools,” the MP concludes,
– concludes the deputy.
It should be noted that we are talking about textbooks for eighth-graders as of August 19, but the MP wrote about them, because he analyzed this particular class based on data from the “Institute for Modernization of Education Content”. However, it can be assumed that the situation with textbooks for other classes may be similar.
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Textbooks for children with special needs
The most critical situation is with textbooks for children with special educational needs. Instead of the planned 30 thousand textbooks in Braille, only 6 contracts for printing 6,549 copies have been signed. At the same time, as of August 20, not a single Braille textbook had been delivered to schools.
“For children with visual impairments, Braille textbooks are the only possible learning tool. The absence of these books means that pupils with special educational needs may actually be deprived of access to education on equal terms, which contradicts both the Constitution of Ukraine and international conventions”,
– serhiy Babak emphasized.
This situation creates a real threat of disruption of the beginning of the school year. The lack of textbooks will not only complicate the educational process, but may also lead to violation of children’s constitutional rights to quality education. This is especially true for the most vulnerable categories of students – children with special educational needs, for whom specialized textbooks are not just teaching aids, but the only way to obtain knowledge.
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