The Ministry of Education (Mineduc) instructed some subsidized municipal and private schools to reuse part of their school books. The measure will be applied from 2023 in 2,675 campuses -located in urban areas and with high enrollment-, focused on the levels of fifth grade to fourth grade.
According to emol, the aforementioned levels will be asked to “reuse up to 15% of the texts of the 2022 student”. This is equivalent to between six and eight copies on average per subject.
From the Mineduc they pointed out that there are subjects that will require less recovery due to the stock that is in the warehouse, such as the case of Sciences for Citizenship. In this matter it is required to recover between two to three copies per course.
In turn, there will be modifications in the “activity notebooks” that are given to students together with school textbooks. From 2023, they will be delivered in printed format only in the subject of Mathematics for prekindergarten, kindergarten, and first to fourth grade.
“For the other subjects and levels, the activity notebooks will be available in digital format, so that the teacher can contextualize the pedagogical resources to the characteristics and needs of the students,” they pointed out from the Mineduc.
The ministry pointed out that the set of measures have an environmental and sustainability motive. They commented that the printing of school textbooks – aimed at three million students – consume about 12 thousand tons of paper. With the new strategy, Mineduc expects to reuse 731,338, equivalent to 343 tons of paper.
In terms of budget, the measure would mean a saving of $1,034,086,509 pesos.
The Mineduc maintained that the current books are made to be used again. They explained that in 2020 the school textbook modernization plan “considered reuse among the technical requirements requested in the bidding bases.”
“That is why the current school textbooks of the public system have the technical-pedagogical characteristics that allow them to be reused,” they affirmed.
“The review of the texts will be carried out by the educational establishment itself, since they are the ones who have direct access to these educational resources and, therefore, can evaluate those that are in the best condition,” they added.
