Among the good things that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert's 2024 Bud­get of­fered was a grant of $1,000 for school sup­plies and books to as­sist needy fam­i­lies in meet­ing their an­nu­al school costs.

The grant, as Min­is­ter Im­bert ex­plained, will be giv­en to those who qual­i­fy through a means test, with an es­ti­mat­ed 65,000 ben­e­fi­cia­ries in line to qual­i­fy through such process.

While this is unar­guably a much-need­ed re­lief to low-in­come par­ents/guardians, it is sim­ply just a plug in a hole that's been widen­ing year­ly.

The min­is­ter touched on the more sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem when he an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment in­tends to con­sult with all ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers to stan­dard­ise text­books as far as is prac­ti­ca­ble.

The aim is to elim­i­nate the prac­tice of un­nec­es­sary new text­books ar­riv­ing on the cur­ricu­lum every year, most of which are la­belled as 'new edi­tions', which ef­fec­tive­ly pre­vent par­ents/guardians from pass­ing down books from one child to an­oth­er.

The new edi­tions al­so come at high­er prices and are not al­ways proven to be rel­e­vant.

In 2019, the then ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia not­ed that the Learn­ing Ma­te­ri­als Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee (LMEC), which is charged with re­view­ing school learn­ing ma­te­ri­als, had found that many changes made by pub­lish­ers in new edi­tion text­books were mi­nor.

How­ev­er, as par­ents/guardians again com­plained about the high cost of school books and changes in book­lists last year, pub­lish­ers were de­fen­sive, say­ing they were on­ly ad­just­ing to meet the chang­ing cur­ricu­lums of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

In a bid to ap­pease par­ents/guardians, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said there would be no change to the list of text­books is­sued in the aca­d­e­m­ic year 2022/2023, for the new aca­d­e­m­ic year 2023/2024.

Had this promise been kept, we would not be where we are to­day, seek­ing to re­open dis­cus­sions with stake­hold­ers for a prob­lem we analysed years ago.

These con­sul­ta­tions, there­fore, must be mean­ing­ful, the re­sult of which must be a struc­tured ap­proach to cur­ricu­lum changes that would al­low for school books to be used for an agreed num­ber of years be­fore they are up­dat­ed or re­vised.

Pre­vi­ous at­tempts to fix the prob­lem must be re­viewed in the con­text of what can be re­vis­it­ed and im­proved.

The Gov­ern­ment had sought a so­lu­tion through the Text­book Pro­gramme in the 2015-2016 aca­d­e­m­ic year, by which books were loaned to stu­dents with­out charge or rent­ed to them for the du­ra­tion of the school year.

There were fur­ther ef­forts to main­tain the lists of books re­quired for use in schools when, in 2019, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry an­nounced there would be no changes that re­quired pur­chas­ing new edi­tions.

How­ev­er, pres­sure from pub­lish­ers, who chal­lenged the com­po­si­tion of the eval­u­a­tion com­mit­tee and their abil­i­ty to as­sess the pub­li­ca­tions, erod­ed the gains made back then.

Amid the cur­rent tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments to­day, ed­u­ca­tion stake­hold­ers must al­so seek to blend the use of phys­i­cal books with shared on­line con­tent, which will al­so help to re­duce the an­nu­al fi­nan­cial bur­dens par­ents/guardians bear.

Such a move brings added ad­van­tages, with stu­dents be­ing ex­posed to com­put­er tech­nol­o­gy in class­rooms at ear­ly ages and the Gov­ern­ment be­ing giv­en a broad­er plat­form to progress its dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion dri­ve.

The two-year pan­dem­ic pe­ri­od has al­ready pre­sent­ed us with new ways of do­ing things in ed­u­ca­tion.

Let's not regress any fur­ther.