Primary and secondary school textbooks rose in prices by an average of 1.6% and 1.0% respectively this year.
The extent of increase was below the average increase of 2.7% in the Composite CPI in the preceding 12-month period 2009 over the same period 2008.
The Consumer Council's annual survey covered a total of 778 commonly used textbooks (310 primary and 468 secondary), of which 478 (61.4%) remained unchanged in price this year.
By subject, the biggest increases were found in: General Studies for Primary (2.6%), and Applied Mathematics for Secondary (15.4%).
Price increases were attributed to a number of factors including education reform, curriculum diversification, rising operation costs and declining student population.
But costs of paper have in fact come down by 12.6% for uncoated wood free paper, and 8.8% for coated art paper. Printing costs remained largely unchanged; a few printers even reported decreases of 5% to 25%.
According to the textbook publishers' associations, majority of their member publishers are willing to face the hard times with the public by freezing the book prices, and have appealed to retailers to provide discounts and interest-free installment payment service to the parents in order to lessen their burden.
The survey did not include textbooks for the New Academic Structure (3-3-4) classes since there is no base for comparison (with last year's price).
The expenditures of the Senior Secondary 1 and F.4 of the old academic system will be compared in the forthcoming Textbook Expenditure Survey of the Council for publication in September.
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