WATANI International
3 October 2010
The battle between the Ministry of Education and publishers of extra-curricular books goes on
For all too long the parents of school-aged children have sensed that their children cannot rely solely on the books published and provided by the Ministry of Education.
The school textbooks, the parents complain, are never enough. They do not offer sufficient explanation or exercises. For decades students have been resorting to extra-curricular books which offer the additional explanation and exercises needed, and which have now become indispensable to the educational process.
The ministry’s right
The education minister’s most recent decision to inflict a EGP240-million charge on the authors of unofficial textbooks and their publishers has brought him under fire from the authors, publishers and, more important, the parents of schoolchildren. It is only some nine months since Education Minister Ahmed Zaky Badr has been in office, and he has vowed to take corrective steps in the direction of the direly needed education reform. Dr Badr says the extracurricular books are absolutely based on the ministry books—without the ministry books there would be no extracurricular books in the first place—thus the ministry is entitled to copyrights dues. But the publishers and authors, who saw it was unjust that they should pay copyright dues, took the matter to court.
This is not the first such crisis. State attempts to wipe out extra curricular books have been ongoing since the 1960s. In 1962, the Education Ministry granted the authors and publishers of non-government textbooks a year’s grace period after which the market should be cleared of all their books. In 1964 a law was passed forbidding the printing, publishing, sale or display of any book that included all or part of the ministry’s educational curricula as taught in public or private schools or in any school managed by or affiliated to the ministry. The law also stipulated that the penalty for breaking this law was a maximum of three months’ imprisonment and/or a fine. In all cases the book would be confiscated.
In 1988 a ministerial decree was issued to put the 1964 law into effect, hence the first face off between the Education Ministry and the book marketers. Supporters of the books denounced the ministerial decree, calling it an act of enmity against what they labelled “a national industry”. Following this, a number of ministerial decrees were issued in relation to the books between 1988 and 2010.
No books
Hassan Ashour, a bookshop owner in Faggala, a middle-class Cairo district, explained that all the extracurricular books on sale in the market had begun circulation more than 40 years ago during which time they had earned the trust of both parents and students. Commenting on Dr Badr’s latest decision, Mr Ashour fears it would definitely affect the publishing business in Egypt, in addition to some 100,000 bookshops.
“We haven’t received any in our bookshop this season, the publishers haven’t sent any,” book vendor Mahmoud Shams told Watani. “This time of the year used to be very prosperous for us,” he said, “since it coincides with the beginning of the school year. Today, those bookshops that had stock from last year’s books are now selling them secretly. [Watani noticed, however, that there was a thriving black market for 2010/2011 books]. If Mr Badr’s decision is put into effect the book prices which ranged from EGP15 to 20 will go up to EGP100.”
The real victims
The Egyptian family is already burdened with the annual expense of equipping a child for school and the cost of his or her education. So it is with plenty of apprehension that the public has greeted the possible increase in the prices of extra-curricula books.
“The authorities don’t consider our problems or our welfare,” Hamdy Abdel-Azim, a middle-ranking employee, told Watani. With Egyptian families, especially those on a meagre income, he said, spending a large portion of their income on education, it is impossible for them to sustain more expenses. Mr Abdel-Azim assumes that the books will not appear on the shelves until the publishers have paid the new fees, which he believes they will do. And since parents care for the welfare of their children they will opt to buy the books, even if to the detriment of their ailing incomes. Like other parents, Mr Abdel-Azim believes that the problem with the ministry books is that in design or in content they appeal neither to parents nor students. They lack comprehensive material supported by questions and answers, as well as models of exercises and previous exams to aid understanding. Mr Abdel-Azim thinks that it would be more worthwhile to review and update the ministry books rather than place the emphasis on non-government books.
Housewife Hanaa’ Shehata told Watani that Egyptian families were the real victims in the conflict over copyrights fees. She pointed out that text books have become big business and those involved would not allow one Pound to slip from their fingers. If there were any additional costs, copyright or other, they would pass on to the consumer.
Not to worry
Giza education department deputy Mahmoud Seddiq says the ministry was making a legitimate demand but did not intend to put an extra burden on parents. The publishers should pay copyright fees out of their profits. “We would like to assure parents that the decision on copyright fees has been thoroughly studied, and so were its prospective repercussions,” Seddiq said. “The ministry has coordinated with the price monitoring apparatuses to stand against any one who exploits the decision to his own benefit”. Seddiq promised that this year the ministry books would hold lots of surprises regarding both design and content, and examinations would be restricted within the content of the official books.
Mr Badr appeared on Egyptian TV earlier this month on a talk show presented by Abdel-Latif al-Manawi to spell out his point of view. He said the matter was now in court. “I challenge anyone to find material in extra curricula books which does not exist in the ministry books,” he said. The only difference is that the explanations printed in them are more thorough.” Mr Badr said the Ministry of Education was in the process of reviewing its books to spare students having to resort to outside books.
One of two
Not everyone shares the opinion that extracurricular books are a necessary evil. Nadi Abdel-Salaam, a former senior supervisor at the Education Ministry, believes extra-curricula textbooks help to broaden students’ minds by offering different ideas and stimulating research, a measure not emphasised in ministry books. Copyright fees, he says, will not solve the education dilemma in Egypt; what we really need is an entire new outlook and strategy on education before improvements can be seen.
Dr Mohamed Rashad, head of the Publishers Union, says that several producers of the unofficial textbooks had approached the union on the copyright problems. “We contacted the minister through a joint committee to try and determine the exact amounts demanded, which later proved to be exorbitant figures: up to EGP1.8 million per course,” Rashad said. If the minister insists on collecting these fees, he says, one of two things will happen: either some of the experienced publishers will go out of the business, which will be a great economic loss; or the price to the end user will increase dramatically.
For or against
An Education Ministry spokeswoman, Lubna Abdel-Rehim, told Watani that the ministry had carried out a study to determine the size of sales of the books in question before announcing the minister’s decision. Based on the results of that study, the minister judged it legitimate to demand copyright fees in order to issue licences for the books. For the 865 books licensed by the ministry it demanded some EGP250 million, she said. The ministry dealt very generously with the publishers, Dr Abdel-Rehim stressed, and it should not be overlooked that all the money collected by the ministry in copyright fees would go towards improving the educational process. “If the crisis persists and the publishers keep challenging the ministry’s decision, the ministry books will offer the same material already offered by the unofficial books, and then there will be no need for these books,” she said. However it was reasonable to assume that the ministry would not be able to do that before the school year 2011/2012.
Commenting on the study conducted by the ministry Tareq Ali, the curriculum department director at the Education Ministry, says the study was not objective in that it overlooked major expenditures on the part of the publishers. The ministry, moreover, this year had no back-up plan to serve the students in case of obstinacy on the part of the publishers, nor was it able to offer students and teachers—who also rely on the unofficial books—a reasonable alternative.
Typical spending
A study by Abdel-Khaleq Farouq, an expert in the economics of education, revealed what, in a given year, was the typical expenditure on education in Egypt. The Ministry of Education spent some EGP1.2 billion during the school year 2005/2006 to publish textbooks. Even so, the market for unofficial books remained huge, despite the heavy burden it exacts on family budgets. Egyptian families, the study disclosed, spent an estimated EGP625 million on unofficial books during the same year, in addition to EGP2 billion on private tutoring.