12 days before the start of the school year, Ukrainian schools received just over 4.4 million textbooks, which is only 51% of the total. The worst situation is with the new direct delivery mechanism from publishers: only 10% of books reached students, said Serhiy Babak, Head of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Committee on Education, Science and Innovation, as reported by UNN.
Today we will talk about textbooks. Our committee has been meticulously monitoring their delivery for three years now. I believe that providing schools with new textbooks before the start of the academic year is the minimum we are obliged to do.
And then the official provided data on what proportion of students are currently provided with textbooks.
This year, 1,402,457.6 UAH were allocated from the state budget for textbooks (selection, printing, delivery).
With these funds, the following were to be printed and delivered:
- 8.7 million copies for 8th grade of NUS (New Ukrainian School);
- 30 thousand textbooks in Braille;
- almost 312 thousand textbooks for children with special educational needs.
"Speaking about textbooks for 8th grades of NUS, 110 agreements were signed for printing 8.6 million copies. 67.3% of them were to be delivered, as always, through regional book bases. The rest – through the new mechanism: directly from publishers to schools with data displayed in the AIKOM electronic educational system," Babak wrote.
What is the situation as of August 18:
- 5.2 million out of 5.8 million necessary textbooks have already been delivered to regional bases (this is 90.58%), but only 4.1 million copies (78.6%) have actually reached schools so far. This means that almost every fifth textbook has not yet reached schools;
- under the new mechanism: out of 2.8 million copies, 307 thousand have been delivered so far (this is 10.64%).
"In total, out of 8.7 million planned textbooks, only 4,462,691 copies have reached schools so far, which is only 51.18%," Babak added.