A call was made today for the economic burden of textbooks is relieved For many families. They have been the Ombudsman and the president of the Spanish committee of UNICEF, who have recalled that at the beginning of the year, the books are a prominent item in family budgets.
Last year, a study "Free textbooks: programs, grants, loans and reuse" was published, which pointed to the need for means to enable children to attend compulsory education for free (as established in our Constitution).
The Ombudsman recommends that you favor the lending and reuse systems of textbooks and highlights that school materials have a high cost for society, via state budgets, autonomous communities and parents.
For this it is necessary that students have the habit of taking care of materials or books in order to be able to reuse or lend them. But in these first two years of implementation of the LOMCE this will be difficult, since in the courses in which there are changes, the books are of recent introduction, due to changes in subjects and content modification.
Representatives of the entities that carry out the appeal believe that the circle of poverty can be broken through education, but for this there must be equal access to this
Thus, administrations and institutions have been urged to implement Measures to achieve gratuity and promote universal loan and reuse systems. In fact, in the LOMCE itself, the Fifth Additional Provision states that the Ministry will promote the free lending of books and other materials in centers supported by public funds.
The issue here is if textbooks are necessary, or rather if the amount of books that children need in a single school year is necessary. That I am not angry at the editors, who already pointed to the small increase in the price of books for this course (although I don't know what to think of the 240 euros they cost for a girl in Third Primary).
A topic to explore, which I am already looking forward to doing, and more since reading this interview with Carmen Babe, director of a public Primary school in Madrid that gets excellent results, and without textbooks!
