Updating the procedure for the competitive selection of school textbooks is an important step towards improving their content and quality.
This was emphasized by Minister of Education Serhiy Shkarlet, commenting on the work of the Ministry of Education and Culture on improving the quality of school textbooks.
According to him, the Ministry of Education started work in this direction last year.
"Everyone remembers the criticism from parents and teachers regarding the chemistry textbook for the 9th grade published in 2017 and the world history textbook for the 11th grade in 2019. I believe that the criticism is absolutely justified, because there were inappropriate nonsense on the pages of educational literature," the minister noted.
He also noted that the MES team began to fight this problem precisely by significantly improving the selection procedure.
"Competitive selections of textbooks (except for electronic ones) for the 9th grade and manuals for students of complete general secondary education and teaching staff have already been announced according to the new rules. The main difference of the new Procedure is complete transparency and openness of all stages of the competition," Shkarlet noted.
In particular, only those textbooks that have been given the seal of the Ministry of Education and Culture will be able to participate in the selection. Thus, the process of examination of textbooks is excluded from the competition - it will precede it. This will increase the time for experts to work, and will also give authors and publishers the opportunity to finalize textbooks after receiving comments.
In addition, the Minister of Education emphasized that from now on, textbooks will be submitted to the competition in the form of original layouts, and more time will be provided for familiarization with the newly created textbooks.
Discussion of textbooks by teachers, parents and other interested persons has also become mandatory.
Special attention will be paid to the design of educational publications.
"We don't stop there. The plans are to resume the process of approving textbooks before their mass introduction into educational institutions," the Minister of Education summarized.
As you know, on December 14, the Verkhovna Rada adopted a law whose purpose is to improve the scientific and methodological support of education and the quality of school educational literature.
