School text­books are not cheap.

And with new edi­tions of­ten be­ing pub­lished mere­ly to cor­rect ty­pos or in­clude new ma­te­r­i­al, some­times stu­dents have no oth­er choice but to buy new text­books at full price, in­stead of pur­chas­ing less cost­ly sec­ond-hand ones.

The pur­chase of school text­books is a ma­jor fi­nan­cial com­mit­ment many par­ents and guardians are faced with an­nu­al­ly dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust va­ca­tion pe­ri­od as they pre­pare for the new term.

It is, there­fore, heart­en­ing to hear that there may be some fi­nan­cial re­prieve be­ing of­fered to par­ents and guardians for next aca­d­e­m­ic year.

That re­prieve comes in the form of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s an­nounce­ment on Mon­day that for the next aca­d­e­m­ic year, there will be no changes on school book­lists at any class lev­el.

This text­book freeze, which will kick in for the 2023/24 aca­d­e­m­ic year, par­ent/guardians hav­ing al­ready pur­chased text­books for the cur­rent year, is in­deed wel­comed.

It is, of course, par­tic­u­lar­ly wel­come to par­ents/guardians who have been com­plain­ing for years that some schools make un­nec­es­sary changes to book­lists, with the ad­di­tion­al books some­times not even be­ing used by their chil­dren af­ter they ex­pend mon­ey or them.

In ad­di­tion to this, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has an­nounced that in col­lab­o­ra­tion with iGovTT, it is cur­rent­ly en­gaged in the pro­cure­ment process for an e-book plat­form for use in the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor.

So far, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has said it has re­ceived 42 re­spons­es to the pub­li­ca­tion of a Re­quest for In­for­ma­tion on e-books last Jan­u­ary.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said it al­so held a meet­ing with book­sellers to dis­cuss and clar­i­fy cer­tain is­sues sur­round­ing the pro­vi­sion of e-books.

The Re­quest for Pro­pos­als doc­u­ment should be made pub­lic next month, the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry has not­ed.

The Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry said the pro­vi­sion of e-books is one of just 13 projects which com­prise the Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Plan 2022-25 of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion.

“In­te­gral to the suc­cess of the e-book ini­tia­tive are oth­er projects cur­rent­ly on­go­ing, such as the digi­ti­sa­tion of all records for our over 250,000 EC­CE, Pri­ma­ry and Sec­ondary School stu­dents on the Stu­dent Man­age­ment Sys­tem (SMS), and the cre­ation of e-class­room ac­counts for all stu­dents and teach­ers on the School Learn­ing Man­age­ment Sys­tem (SLMS),” the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry stat­ed.

We ap­plaud the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry’s ini­tia­tives, as we be­lieve that there are nec­es­sary changes that need to be made.

But at the same time, we urge the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry to en­sure that all con­cerns with re­spect to the roll­out of e-books and the oth­ers be prop­er­ly ad­dressed be­fore they are im­ple­ment­ed.

Some of those con­cerns in­clude the need to en­sure there are de­vices and in­fra­struc­ture in place to en­sure a smooth roll­out, as well as en­sur­ing stu­dents have on­line ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty, an ab­solute re­quire­ment for en­sur­ing full ac­cess to ebook fa­cil­i­ties.

We there­fore call for con­tin­ued com­mu­ni­ca­tion and con­sul­ta­tion with stake­hold­ers to en­sure we achieve the best for our chil­dren.