On the afternoon of May 26, the Ministry of Education and Training said it had proposed to the Ministry of Finance and the Government to consider including textbooks on the list of goods priced by the State for submission to the National Assembly for decision.
According to the provisions of the Price Law 2012, textbooks are not on the list of items that are priced by the State, but are declared by enterprises with the Ministry of Finance. Publishers are solely responsible before the law for the correctness and suitability of the declared bookshelf plan.
Currently, 7 publishers have registered to add the textbook publishing function (including Vietnam Education Publishing House). According to the Ministry of Education, the fact that publishers declare prices as they are now can lead to different high and low prices. Meanwhile, textbooks belong to the group of essential educational materials for students; affecting social security, especially people in disadvantaged areas.
This leads to the situation that at the beginning of each school year, parents react about the cost of buying books for their children. This year, information about the 3rd, 7th and 10th grade textbooks of Vietnam Education Publishing House 2-3 times higher compared to the existing bookshelf created psychological instability for many people.
Therefore, the Ministry of Education believes that the State needs to have an “urgent solution to regulate prices” through the mechanism of putting textbooks on the list of goods priced by the State. At that time, the State stipulates the ceiling price of textbooks on the basis of economic and technical norms, standard criteria for the set of books and current unit prices to ensure that the publishers can still cover the costs and benefit. reasonable profits and book prices suitable to people’s ability to pay.
This is not the first time the Ministry of Education and Training has made this recommendation. In 2020, when the first grade textbooks according to the new general education program were introduced, the Ministry made a similar proposal.
At that time, based on the proposal of the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Finance, the Government submitted a report to the Standing Committee of the National Assembly, but not approved yet as there is no impact assessment yet.
Grade 1 books in the series Connecting knowledge with life. Image: Thanh Hang
Currently, when textbooks are not on the list of goods priced by the State, the Ministry of Education said that it has taken a number of measures such as asking publishers to minimize production costs to reduce prices. book; coordinate with localities to provide books for disadvantaged students, and to support school libraries with enough books.
With Vietnam Education Publishing House – a State-owned enterprise managed by the Ministry, the Ministry requested to research and strengthen the application of information technology, diversify distribution channels… to reduce publishing costs. According to the Ministry of Education, the price of new book sets of this unit in recent years is often lower than that of other publishers in the market.
Discussing at the group at the National Assembly on the morning of May 25, Education Minister Nguyen Kim Son explain Condition of new textbooks is 2-3 times more expensive than used books. According to him, the new book is compiled with a larger format and better paper. The process from compilation to introduction, testing, and release is all done by businesses, then declares prices with the Ministry of Finance.
The new general education program was approved in 2018, starting to apply to grade 1 from 2020. Along with the program, new textbooks are also designed and put into use. For the first time, Vietnam implemented “one program, many textbooks”, “encouraging organizations and individuals to compile textbooks on the basis of the general education curriculum” according to Resolution 88 of 2014 issued by the Prime Minister. promulgated by the National Assembly. The monopoly on publishing textbooks was broken.
at Blogtuan.info – Source: vnexpress.net – Read the original article here
