Limited text books for next year: CTU
The Educational Publication Department had only provided fifty percent text books for the next year’s requirement, the Ceylon Teachers’ Union (CTU) yesterday claimed.
CTU General Secretary Joseph Stalin said the department had instructed the school authorities to reuse the old text books to fulfill the requirement.
He also charged that the selling price has been printed on the text books creating suspicions of whether the ministry is allegedly forcing the parents to purchase the texts books for the students.
We only encourage the schoolchildren from grade six to eight to reuse the old text books. Grade nine students were given new books as their text book changed. Also grade ten and eleven always given new books as they have to use them for two years due to the G.C.E. (Ordinary Level) exam
He said the ministry is annually spending around Rs. 2,500 million to provide free texts books therefore the CTU suspects by cutting down the expenditure the ministry is allegedly attempting to curtail the free education.
However, when contacted, Educational Publication Department Commissioner General I.M.K.B. Ilangasinghe said the Department had only reduced the stock from 25 percent according to the routine practice.
He said the department always encourage the school children to reuse the text books and the reduction of text book by 25% was not an arbitrary decision. Ilangasinghe also said the reuse method is not being implemented for the text books from grade one to five.
“We only encourage the schoolchildren from grade six to eight to reuse the old text books. Grade nine students were given new books as their text book changed. Also grade ten and eleven always given new books as they have to use them for two years due to the G.C.E. (Ordinary Level) exam,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ilangasinghe said the selling price of each book has been marked by the department as the international schools have to purchase those as they were not issued free of charge. However, he assured that the department has no intension of restricting the distribution of free text books but only carrying out the accepted protocols of the department.