Education chief issues debundling demand
May 31, 2011
Secretary for Education Michael Suen says the Government will introduce competition in the textbook industry to provide better quality and more reasonably priced teaching materials to schools.
He also laid out a demand for publishers to separately price materials teachers need most, such as teacher's books, question banks and CDs, within a year.
If publishers fail to do so in that time, the bureau will invite tenders for publishing textbooks and learning materials.
Speaking to the media today, Mr Suen said he was disappointed with textbook publishers who have so far failed to sort out copyright issues to offer debundled textbooks and learning materials.
He said the policy on debundled textbooks and learning materials was supposed to have been implemented last year, but publishers said they needed a year to solve copyright-related issues.
“The problem has dragged on for years. It was with the agreement of publishers and Legislative Council members that the publishers would need one year, that is the past year, to sort out all problems related to copyright,” Mr Suen told the media.
“In return [the publishers] have agreed to freeze the prices of textbooks for one year. It was expected they would have done something on the copyright issues in the past year.
“We are thoroughly disappointed that during that one year they didn’t do anything and even pushed back the completion of copyright problems for another three years. They are exceptionally unhelpful and we can’t tolerate the situation for any longer.”
Mr Suen said publishers had been providing free teaching materials to schools to promote sales. To prevent publishers from shifting the costs of those materials to the parents by raising textbook prices, the Education Bureau has banned schools from accepting such offers since April.
To accommodate teachers’ needs, schools are allowed to borrow sample books from publishers for selection, while Secondary Six teachers can borrow question banks so they can help students prepare for the new secondary education examination which will be inaugurated next year.
Mr Suen guarantees the bureau will provide sufficient online teaching resources.
A working group will be set up to monitor and review the debundling policy. Details will be announced later, he said.
The Education Bureau has uploaded the recommended textbook list for the 2011-12 school year to its
website.
