補習-Tender threat for publishers in textbook row

A special task force will be set up to recommend ways of putting textbooks out to public tender next year if publishers still refuse to comply with the debundling policy, Secretary for Education Michael Suen Ming-yeung said.
Taking Singapore’s experience as a reference in tendering out the publications to introduce more competition, Suen said yesterday the cost of such an exercise for each subject can be up to HK$2 million.

The exercise, if it is pushed through, will be completed by 2014, he added.

The bureau plans to introduce two to three sets of teaching materials in cooperation with universities for each subject so that schools can have more choices.

“Tendering out textbooks can help integrate the market,” Suen said.

The task force, to be chaired by Undersecretary for Education Kenneth Chen Wei-on, will include principals, teachers, parents, the Consumer Council, educators and business sector representatives. Its membership will be announced tomorrow. It will submit a report to Suen by year-end so that policies can be set out to relieve parents’ burden for the 2012-2013 school year.

Publishers were given one year to debundle textbooks from teaching and learning materials and provide separate pricing within one year, Suen said as he revealed that prices are up 3 to 5 percent for the 2011-12 school year.

“The market is twisted since big publishers have monopolized the market,” he said.

Suen was “very disappointed and regretted” the fact that most publis

hers have not followed the debundling policy.

His frustrations were aired as his bureau posted its recommended textbook list for the next school year online.

The latest price list for debundled publications shows a Secondary One Chinese history textbook from Ling Kee Publishing costs HK$122. With teaching and learning materials, it costs HK$244.

A Secondary One history textbook from Aristo Educational Press will cost students HK$122, while a whole set of teaching materials costs HK$1,500.

An agreement was reached last year in the Legislative Council that the debundling policy could be delayed by a year due to copyright issues.

“These delaying tactics by the textbook publishers are not acceptable,” Suen said.

Consumer Council executive director Connie Lau Yin-hing said: “Parents and schools do not have a real choice if only 5 percent of textbooks are debundled.”

Books were sold at prices that outstripped the pace of inflation from 2001 to 2008, with prices only frozen in 2009 and 2010, she added.

In a joint statement, the Hong Kong Educational Publishers Association and The Anglo-Chinese Textbook Publishers Organisation said that tendering out publications “will lead to fewer publishers joining the market, thus reducing choices for consumers.”

They said debundling will happen “within three years.”