VietNamNet Bridge – Parents, who have been paying more for food and services, will also have to pay more for their children’s education as the prices of textbooks will increase by 10% in the next academic year.

Deputy General Director of the state owned Education Publishing House Nguyen Minh Khang said that the prices of textbooks will increase for the 2008-2008 academic year by 10% on average.

Khang said that the publishing house has been trying to keep textbook prices unchanged over the past few years and accept low profit in order to help ease difficulties for students. However, the house cannot maintain the prices anymore as printing paper prices are skyrocketing.

He added that many printing houses which have won bids to print textbooks have officially requested that the Education Publishing House adjust the prices of bidding packages. As a result, the publishing house had to seek permission from relevant ministries to raise the sale prices of textbooks to be printed in 2008, which has been approved.

Khang said that the new textbooks will see a 10% price increases on average.

With such an average price increase, 11^th class students will suffer the highest price increases. A set of textbooks for 11^th class students (21 textbooks) will be priced between VND172,000 and 186,000 (the prices are different for students studying natural sciences, basic subjects or social sciences).

Meanwhile, a set of textbooks for 12^th class students will be priced at VND78,400, and a set of textbooks for 6^th class students at VND118,500. The parents of children going to the 1^st class in 2008-2009 will have to pay VND64,200 for every set of textbooks. As such, with the average increase, students will have to pay VND6-9,000 more for every set of textbooks.

Khang said that the Education Printing House will apply a lot of measures in order to ease the burden on students. The printing house will limit the number of textbooks to be newly printed, while encouraging students to study with used textbooks. In addition to requesting that the Ministry of Education and Training improve the circulation of used textbooks in order to assist poor students, the printing house has also requested teaching aids companies to sell and purchase used textbooks.

Companies in the north and south will have to purchase some VND1.5bil worth of used textbooks, while central region companies VND500mil. The companies will also set up book stores to sell used textbooks to students at prices around 1/5 off cover prices.

Textbook price decrease plan fails, again

After the government’s inspection agency found some problems in the Education Publishing House, the Prime Minister on May 21, 2007 released a dispatch, asking the Ministry of Education and Training and the Education Publishing House to draw up a plan to reduce textbook prices.

However, the leaders of the publishing house asked for the plan’s delay because it signed contracts on printing textbooks with printing houses already, and it could not change the contracts. In return for this, the publishing house promised to give more books to poor students.

(Source: GD & XH)