Parents bump in difficulties finding textbooks for children
The school year 2022-2023 is the first year that textbooks implement the 2018 General Education Program for grades 7 and 10. Publishers have been already in their printing but they spent more time distributing books to bookstores where parents can get them.
Therefore, at the training session to implement the 2018 General Education Program for grades 7 and 10, the leader of the Secondary Education Department said that the education sector should facilitate the purchase of textbooks to help parents and students.
In less than a month, students of all grades in Ho Chi Minh City will return to school. Currently, parents and students are rushing to buy textbooks, especially for grades 3, 7, and 10 because this is the first year of implementation of the 2018 General Education Program. However, they bumped into difficulties finding textbooks.
Disguising being a parent looking to buy textbooks for a seventh grader, the SGGP Newspaper reporter contacted many large bookstores in the southern metropolis but could only buy books from the Creative Horizons series published by the Education Publishing House.
Worse, two sets of Kite and Connecting Knowledge to Life are not seen in bookstores. Specifically, at Thang Long Bookstore in Binh Thanh District, the salesperson said that the store only sold Creative Horizons textbooks but two sets of Kite and Connecting Knowledge to Life due to too little demand for the two sets.
Similarly, at Hai An Bookstore in District 1, textbooks of the Kite series ran out of books for all subjects last week. Bookstore staff replied no plan for the distribution of the textbooks.
Elsewhere in Ho Chi Minh City, the city School Equipment and Book Company in District 5, one of the major distributors of textbooks in the city, but textbooks for three subjects including lessons for citizenship education, Music, and Informatics in the Kite series for seventh grade were left while no textbooks of the Connecting Knowledge to Life was available in the bookstore.
Ms. Nguyen Minh Trang, a parent in Go Vap district whose child is in tenth grade this year, said that she went to three bookstores in districts Go Vap and Binh Thanh to buy enough textbooks in all textbooks for her child. Several assistants of some stores answered no textbooks while their peers in other stores told her to return in mid-August, but they were not certain if there are enough books on all subjects. She moaned that at Phuong Nam Bookstore in Go Vap District, the kite set only has Literature (volumes 1 and 2), Geography, Economic and legal education, and Grade 10 experiential activities while textbooks of other subjects have not been displayed yet.
Similarly, at the Book and School Equipment store in Binh Thanh District, staff said that the Kite series’ textbooks Geography, Mathematics, Informatics, National Defense Security, Education physical fitness of the kite series will be available this week. Parents who need to buy books in other subjects can contact the bookstore to place an order for their textbooks if they need to buy a lot, there will be more new books imported.
Staff explained why the stores can’t buy a lot of textbooks at the same time for fear of high inventory. The bookstore just distributed books according to the parents’ registration of textbook purchase or mainly the subjects selected by the majority of schools.
Particularly for grade 3, although most parents registered to buy textbooks by classes as it is difficult for parents to buy more reference books for their children at bookstores. A representative of the Fahasa bookstore system said that if parents can't buy directly at bookstores, they can order online, but the representative was not sure of the delivery time.
Regarding the issue of textbooks, Director of the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Education and Training Nguyen Van Hieu, said that the Department of Education and Training has advised the municipal People's Committee to consult the People's Council to approve the budget for equipping about 100,000 textbooks for high schools. Specifically, the city will hold auctions, then put them in school libraries to share with students.
Previously, at the beginning of July 2022, the education department also sent a document to schools in Thu Duc City and 21 districts requesting strict implementation of regulations on the use of textbooks and reference books in educational facilities.
Under the request, educational institutions were required to allocate a fund to buy textbooks for their school libraries where students can borrow textbooks for study and mobilize students to donate their old textbooks in the library so that students of the following grades can continue to borrow and use, avoiding waste in purchasing and using textbooks.
