Schools lack one quarter of new textbooks

AT THE beginning of new school year on September 2, schools will have just around 75 percent of the textbooks they ordered. Teachers are not surprised.

AT THE beginning of new school year on September 2, schools will have just around 75 percent of the textbooks they ordered. Teachers are not surprised.

“Slovak teachers have gotten used to it and they will deal with it as always,” said Miroslav Sopko of Slovak Chamber of Teachers, the professional organisation, as quoted by the SITA newswire. “Teachers learned to prepare their own education tools but considering their salary the lack of textbooks means another burden making their life miserable.”

Highs schools as well as grades 5-9 in elementary schools will be missing the highest number of textbooks. On the other hand, pupils in special schools will have 93.2 percent of the ordered textbooks and the first four grades of elementary schools will receive 95 percent of all demanded textbooks, which is 20 percent more than in the previous year, the TASR newswire reported.

“Considering the small amount of time I had to make a decision about what will be the [education] ministry’s priorities,” Education Minister Peter Pellegrini said, as quoted by SITA, “I instructed primarily to satisfy the needs of the first level [1-4 grades], which means children who are getting to know school and textbooks for the first time.”

It is impossible to reach a 100-percent success rate this year since some of the ordered textbooks have not even been printed or written yet, according to Pellegrini, who added that the ministry will try to satisfy the needs of grades 5-9 at elementary schools and second-level schools in next few months, SITA reported.

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