Kay-Marie Fletch­er

Se­nior Re­porter

Kay­marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

Sep­tem­ber is here, which means back to school for our na­tion’s chil­dren.

How­ev­er, with less than 48 hours un­til the new school year be­gins, par­ents are dis­tressed over the in­creas­ing prices of books and sta­tionery.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, ac­knowl­edg­ing the plight of most par­ents, some book stores have re­port­ed a drop in sales this year as well.

Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed some book stores yes­ter­day and was met with frus­trat­ed par­ents.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia while shop­ping with his three chil­dren at a book store, one fa­ther, Joel Kay­ton, said, “Every year it is the same thing, books are go­ing up. It don’t go down. It is go­ing up. It’s a re­al sac­ri­fice par­ents have to make to send their chil­dren to school now. I could feel it for peo­ple who have five chil­dren, four chil­dren. I could feel it be­cause that’s the re­al book list you are talk­ing about.”

“Some of the things I try­ing to use back, like their lunch kit and thing. I will clean it up nice, nice and let them use it an­oth­er year be­cause every­thing is a cost,” he added.

Guardian Me­dia checked out the prices of books across sev­er­al book stores yes­ter­day.

The av­er­age cost of books and sta­tionery for one Stan­dard Four pri­ma­ry school pupil was $1173.35.

Mean­while, the av­er­age cost of text books on­ly for a Form Four stu­dent at­tend­ing a gov­ern­ment sec­ondary school do­ing six sub­jects in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish Lan­guage, Bi­ol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Physics and Span­ish was $1,600.

And, a stu­dent do­ing mod­ern stud­ies, in­clud­ing Math­e­mat­ics, Eng­lish Lan­guage, Caribbean His­to­ry and Ge­og­ra­phy, Eng­lish Lit­er­a­ture and In­te­grat­ed Sci­ence came up to ap­prox­i­mate­ly $2,000.

These prices did not in­clude the cost of sta­tionery or school uni­forms.

In ad­di­tion to the high prices of books, some par­ents com­plained that books are not be­ing used.

Al­so speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one frus­trat­ed moth­er, Car­lene Isadore, said, “It’s not a prob­lem for me to pur­chase books, the sce­nario is chil­dren are not us­ing books in school. I bought all the new books for Form One and some teach­ers nev­er even open the books.”

She said the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should put a pro­gramme in place to rent books to stu­dents per term, be­cause par­ents are wast­ing mon­ey pur­chas­ing books that are un­der­utilised in the class­room.

As a re­sult, some par­ents told Guardian Me­dia they have re­sort­ed to buy­ing used books on­ly.

An­oth­er moth­er, Chris­tine Men­doza said, “I don’t buy books in the book store re­al­ly. It’s on­ly if it’s a book that has now come out and the book list de­mands it. Like right now I’m com­ing to buy a book be­cause you can’t get it sec­ond hand and the book is $150 and it’s a work­book and they may not even use it in school.”

But, pur­chas­ing sec­ond-hand books has al­so been prov­ing to be a chal­lenge.

Some par­ents said they have not been able to find new book edi­tions by used book­sellers.

A used-book­seller for 30 years, said this year’s sales slowed down im­mense­ly.

And one busi­ness own­er of a shoe store said she al­so record­ed slow­er sales this time around, as par­ents have had to choose be­tween pur­chas­ing books or buy­ing shoes and book bags.

And speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, one man­ag­er of a book store said she has been re­ceiv­ing a lot of book grants this year.

While at a book store yes­ter­day, Guardian Me­dia ob­served one moth­er with four book grants worth $200 each.