People in the Internet, especially social networks users, have long discussed the unsatisfactory quality of new textbooks. Parents quote obscure passages and clear “misspellings” in the textbooks, publishers write letters to the Minister of Education demanding to explain the reasons for not granting the Ministry’s approval to other textbooks and manuals, except for books published by certain publishing houses. Recently this problem grew to a much larger scale. Teachers started to openly speak about the problem textbooks and parents talk about how in some schools students are not allowed to bring academic books without the Ministry approval and that inspections take place in schools. On October 23 during the parliamentary hearings on “Availability and quality of secondary education: the state and the ways of improvement” the Chairperson of the Committee on Science and Education of Ukrainian Parliament Lilia Hrynevych said: “Today an unprecedented situation has developed on the market of textbooks. This was an initiative that came from teachers, who showed us the problem textbooks. Parents of school students and publishers came to us and spoke about lack of information and huge lines for receiving the Ministry approval. I see only one solution: in order to have good quality textbooks money for their publishing should be allocated to the local authorities. And if teachers, who will have to look students and their parents in the eyes, are involved in purchasing textbooks for schools, the ones with mistakes will never be purchased. That’s why decentralization of textbooks purchasing is required. Ministry’s approval should also be granted in an extremely transparent way by an independent institution.”
Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education insists that the textbooks contain no mistakes in their content. Moreover, the director of the Institute for Innovative Technology and Education Oleksandr Udod said that this campaign to discredit the new textbooks has been organized by… Ternopil-based publishing houses, whose products did not receive state order. Journalists, who criticize these textbooks, also got their share of reproach.
