Teachers can play a pivotal role in reducing the burden of needy parents in textbook expenditure.
The Consumer Council has found in a survey a shining living example of what a substantial difference the effort of teachers can make to textbook expenditure.
The case concerned the remarkable variations for Form Three textbooks: the lowest expenditure was $937 compared with the highest of $2,632, a difference of 1.8 times.
It was found that the former used many materials prepared by the teachers, while the latter required the purchase of many exercise/workbooks as well as costly reference books such as the World Atlas and English Dictionary.
It is therefore observed that the initiative of teachers in the proper use of materials and exercises prepared with their students in mind, is one effective way to help solve the problem of rising textbook expenditure for parents.
In the survey, based on the data from 45 primary and 42 secondary schools, it was found that the average textbook expenditures this year for the two sectors amounted to $1,609 and $1,818 respectively.
Compared with last year, both expenditures have gone up by 1.8% and 1.1% respectively for the primary and secondary sector.
But the increase was not without any exception as the expenditure for Form Three was actually down 1.2% as some schools purchased fewer exercise/workbooks than the previous year or marked "optional" for some textbooks.
Higher increase (3.6%) was recorded in Form Four textbooks due to, among other reasons, changed syllabus for several subjects. For example, the average price of mathematics textbooks was increased significantly (31%).
According to the Education and Manpower Bureau, the revision of the old Secondary 4 mathematics curriculum, which had been in implementation for 18 years, is in line with the curriculum reform to raise students' learning abilities and help them meet the challenges of a knowledge-based, interdependent and fast changing technological society. The new curriculum also emphasizes on developing students' inquiry, communication, reasoning, conceptualization and problem solving skills.
Reasons given by publishers on mathematics textbooks included: the new textbooks contain more IT-support materials, additional chapters, and richer contents.
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