Cab­i­net yes­ter­day agreed to a $94 mil­lion text­book rental pro­gramme for pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools. Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh, who made the an­nounce­ment, said par­ents should not buy the spec­i­fied books for their chil­dren. He said the min­istry would en­ter in­to an agree­ment with the Ed­u­ca­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd (EF­CL) to ac­quire the books. In re­sponse to a ques­tion Gopeesingh said the con­tract would be ex­e­cut­ed un­der the Cen­tral Ten­ders Board Act. He said first and sec­ond-year pupils would be pro­vid­ed with text­books in the five sub­ject ar­eas as well work books in three sub­ject ar­eas. He said for Stan­dards One to Five text­books would be pro­vid­ed in the same five sub­ject ar­eas and one dic­tio­nary for Stan­dard One and one at­las for Stan­dard Three. Stu­dents in Forms One, Two and Three each would be pro­vid­ed with one text­book for each of the sev­en sub­ject ar­eas. Gopeesingh al­so con­firmed the Con­tin­u­ous As­sess­ment Com­po­nent for the Sec­ondary En­trance As­s­es­ment would not be im­ple­ment­ed at the start of the school year in Sep­tem­ber as was orig­i­nal­ly in­tend­ed.

He said the ini­tia­tive pro­vid­ed for test­ing in phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion, agri-sci­ence, cit­i­zen de­vel­op­ment, char­ac­ter de­vel­op­ment, ethics and vi­su­al and the per­form­ing arts. Par­ents had ob­ject­ed to the hasty im­ple­men­ta­tion at the start of the new school year in Sep­tem­ber of the new cur­ricu­lum. They said it should be de­layed. Re­cent­ly, Gopeesingh said he was com­mit­ted to im­ple­ment­ing the ini­tia­tive in Sep­tem­ber. Yes­ter­day he said the ini­tia­tive would be im­ple­ment­ed in Sep­tem­ber for Stan­dard Four pupils as a pi­lot project. He said it would be ful­ly im­ple­ment­ed for the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2013/2014. He said there would be train­ing pro­grammes for teach­ers who have not as yet been train. Gopeesingh said the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the re­cent leak­age of the SEA re­sults was still be­ing car­ried out by po­lice. He said, how­ev­er, he was aware of a "sig­nif­i­cant break­through" in the mat­ter. He said he could not elab­o­rate.