Minister of Education Anthony Garcia says there is no need to panic as at least 90 per cent of textbooks will be available to all students for this school year.
In an interview with the T&T Guardian yesterday, Garcia said all students from infants to Form VI should still have access to textbooks.
“There seems to be panic. People are making assertions that children will be unable to access textbooks but that isn’t true. There are textbooks in the schools which are available to all students,” he said.
Garcia said the last time books were replaced for the entire school system was in 2012.
In the current system, students are given use of books for the school year, which they must return. The ministry then replenishes the stock of books as some are lost or damaged.
This system applied to books from primary school to Form VI.
“Those books are available. It isn’t that children would have no books. It’s just that we are not replacing all the books.”
The ministry usually replaces all the books in the school system every three years as some are damaged or destroyed after three years of use by children.
Every year in between, a small percentage of the books are replaced or “topped up.”
In 2013, there was a ten to 20 per cent top up for books, destroyed, lost and stolen.
There was another ten per cent replacement in 2014.
“In 2015 there should have been a complete renewal but the Cabinet took a decision that this is not something we will be doing,” Garcia said.
He said because of the replacements done in 2013 and 2014, 90 per cent of the books were still available.
“In the schools, the principals must manage the textbook programmes,” he added.
Garcia also said his ministry was still reviewing its position on the provision of laptops to secondary school entrants.
He added: “We are reviewing the whole position on laptops. For laptops to be effective in the schools there must be infrastructure.
“We don’t have that infrastructure in place. There must be broadband coverage and other things.
“The purpose of laptops is to provide support to the implementation of the curriculum. Because we do not have the infrastructure, there is no support.”
He said discussions on the laptop distribution programme would form part of the national consultation on education to be held after Carnival in February.