SEVEN schools easily accessible in the Central Division, some in Suva, have not received their textbooks despite the Education Ministry’s assurance yesterday that all schools have received their textbooks.
School heads speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of victimisation confirmed this.
One said the mode of dispatch was unclear and he or the school manager had to personally collect the textbooks from the ministry but so far they had not been supplied all the textbooks.
A school in Suva, a 10-minute drive away from the Education Ministry headquarters, is yet to receive the Fijian textbook for Year 7.
Another has not received Year 1 Health and Social Science textbooks. The teachers made do with printing the lessons from the e-copy on the ministry’s website and distributed it to students.
A headteacher said they had not received some textbooks for Year 7 and 8. Another said Years 1, 2, 3 and 7 still had not received all their textbooks.
These schools were not part of the 60 called by this newspaper in the past two weeks to ascertain claims by concerned parents that their children did not have textbooks.
This newspaper contacted 15 schools in the Eastern Division, 20 schools in the Central Division, 10 schools in the Northern Division and 15 schools in the Western Division.
We found that some schools had not received textbooks.
We also found about five primary schools in the Eastern Division received their batch after the external exams for Year 4, 6 and 8.
The Government allocated $1.2million, an increase of $149,200, to the Education Resource Centre, tasked to print and distribute the textbooks as part of the Government’s free textbook program this year.
For 2016, the allocation has increased by $807,000 to $2.1m.
