The public association “Solidary Parents” asks the responsible authorities to provide all the students in the Republic of Moldova with textbooks that would be not older than five years. On the Facebook page, members of the association posted a photo of a Romanian language and literature textbook for the fifth grade, which is in a deplorable state. Also, a number of parents posted comments saying that owing to the shortage of textbooks or because the state of textbooks does not enable the students to study from them, they were told to buy these books or to xerox them at their own expense. Some of the parents say that these textbooks cannot be found in bookshops, IPN reports.
“Textbooks that cannot be used to study! The textbooks have been used for eight years! Do the children of those from the Ministry receive such books at school? Definitely, the responsible persons reported that all the students were provided with free textbooks, but there are no statistics about the number of students who got textbooks that they cannot use or who didn’t receive textbooks at all. The reports and communiqués of those from the Ministry of Education and Research of the Republic of Moldova are nice, but the reality is different,” Ala Revenco, executive director of the public association “Solidary Parents”, stated for IPN.
Under the regulations, textbooks for the general education institutions are reprinted when the life of textbooks expires, following a decision taken by the National Textbooks Approval Council, when the textbooks are destroyed and there is a shortage during the utilization period. “We asked the Ministry of Education and Research to include us in the working group on textbook purchase, but we didn’t get a response. There are many problems here. The authorities do not enumerate them and do not look for solutions to them. They do not correctly organize the process of collecting information about the number of textbooks that need to be reprinted,” stated Ala Revenco.
In a comment on the association’s post about the textbooks, Ala Lunchianciuc, the mother of a student from Drochia town, noted that history textbooks for the fifth grade are not enough at the local Lyceum “Mihai Eminescu” and the children were told to use a textbook by two.
Contacted by IPN for a comment, Sergiu Vrabie, director of “Mihai Eminescu” Lyceum of Drochia, said the institution he heads faces problems in supplying the students with textbooks, but they try to solve it by different ways. “We cannot buy textbooks as they are not printed. I instructed the librarian and she is looking for textbooks in other schools of the district where there are fewer children. We will xerox some of these textbooks at the lyceum’s expense,” he stated.
Cristina Gonța, senior specialist at the Information and Mass Media Service of the Ministry of Education and Research, has told IPN that the Ministry will come with a reaction on the issue later.
