Even as we have been continuously witnessing realignment of existing education system in one way or the other to bring vibrancy in the system, there are areas which have remained unattended causing inconvenience to the students. One such grey area is the pricing of textbook. If an international survey conducted by an online textbook is taken into account, we have over 70 per cent students who ask their parents for money to buy textbooks. While as a good percentage of students either skip their meals or take fewer classes to afford textbooks.
The bigger picture which emerged in the survey is that the vast majority of current and former students think their textbooks are overpriced and over 80 per cent have said buying their books is at least somewhat financially stressful. Majority of the students surveyed revealed that they didn’t buy what was required, purchased outdated copies, or shared with classmates.
The survey has featured students in the developed nations where education facilities are highly rated in comparison to our system. The point here is that when students in such developed nations are confronted with financial stress when it comes to buying of textbooks, imagine the worst scenario here at our place. Here, it has been financially very stressful for parents as well as students to manage textbooks.
The mounting cost of education is eating up a major part of the household budget. It’s believed that 65% of parents spend more than half their take-home pay on their children’s education, extra co-curricular activities.
Monopolistic practices of the textbook publishers and their nexus with the school managements is an old phenomenon here. As the new academic year has almost begun, we can witness a festive mood among the booksellers and publishers. They have an assured brisk sale of textbook and notebooks with their choice of pricing.
On the other hand, the enjoyment of these booksellers is the cause of gloom to majority of parents and students. The problem is school textbooks and their astonishing cost. The trap is foolproof as they constitute a compulsory purchase. For a kindergarten kid, the parents have to spend anything of around Rs.3000 to 7000 on the textbooks and notebooks alone.
It’s not only the rising cost factor, but the unnecessary series of ‘mandatory’ textbooks prescribed by schools adding more financial burden to the parents. For instance, a class I student in English, has a course book, one or two a work books, a literature textbook and one or two grammar textbooks. Take the case of note books. Most of the note books go waste, even if they are only 60 pages each, as only half the pages are used by the end of the year.
It’s also a common practice here in schools to revamp textbooks or try new publishers, ruling out any chances for parents to take route of getting a used bargain. In most cases, the publisher supplies directly to the school or through a distributor.
Here an important question rises – where textbook money goes? A tentative look at this aspect reveals, one-fifth of a textbook price goes to the store where it is sold to cover personnel and operating costs, while more than three-quarters goes straight to the publisher who spends around 12 per cent on marketing the textbooks, approximately 10-15 percent goes to the authors.
Even the college textbook prices are increasing faster than tuition and health care costs. The rising cost is not a short-term phenomenon, rising much faster than average inflation in the past few decades.
So, what is the immediate remedy? The government should put a blanket ban on changing the textbooks every year unless it is extremely important. And school should be directed not to print school name on note-books as they are costly and available with particular stationers. And failure to do so will see registering of an FIR against the school. This practice is already in place in some states.
In the meantime, to negotiate the financial stress, the students should buy used textbooks or check whether some one is renting a textbook. In such situations, for example, students with textbooks they no longer need and students who need them can even help each other out by bartering or buying and selling. Even the students can check online availability of reading material relevant to their syllabus, which is either available free of cost or at nominal charges.
(The views are of the author & not the institution he works for)
sajjadbazaz@greaterkashmir.com