Fewer book grants, more free books

Government has introduced a new mechanism for paying the $1000 book grant. And it has also cut down on the number of children receiving this grant, as it moves to phase out the system and introduce the textbook rental scheme. Education Minister Hazel Manning announced yesterday that the book grant would be confined to Forms 3, 4 and Lower 6 students. Furthermore, their parents would receive a plastic credit card valued at $1000 which could be used only for the purchase of schoolbooks. This measure would cost Government $100 million. Meanwhile, she said, primary school children and students of Forms 1 and 2  would  receive free school books. The Education Minister said that in the primary schools the textbook loan programme would include the lending of one book in each of the four major subject areas (Reading, Language Arts, Mathematics and Science). These textbooks would have to be returned at the end of the year and re-used again for two years, she said.  Among Forms 1 and 2 students a textbook rental/loan book scheme would be started for books in four subject areas (maths, language, spanish, science),  she stated.  She added that the programme would be expanded to all the Forms by 2005, replacing completely the book grant.

Manning said Cabinet agreed to the report of the Textbook Evaluation Committee, which looked at all textbooks designed for the new curriculum.  She said the Committee found many of the textbooks submitted for both primary and secondary education failed to meet the standards required. She said in language arts, for instance, no book was found to be suitable. She said the Committee addressed this problem by grading the textbooks on the basis of their overall scores and recommended those textbooks where the overall scores were not far removed from the minimum scores. She added that the Cabinet agreed to the establishment of an Inter-sectoral Textbook Committee as part of the move to facilitate the production of textbooks of a higher quality.