Education Minister: Crisis of school textbooks writers

National Education Minister Valentin Popa stated on Thursday that there is a crisis of textbook writers in Romania, announcing that in autumn, the National Education Ministry (MEN) will set up a working group that will train as many education staff as possible so as to be able to conceive textbooks. 

"We would like to have a symposium in autumn, a conference, a working group where to try to train as many teachers as possible so that they can write textbooks, as we have a crisis of textbook writers. For example, we still have a shortage of English textbooks, we haven't received enough drafts to qualify for an English textbook. Amazingly, but this is the reality and we generally do not have enough drafts so that we have at least three manuals for each discipline that we can give to teachers to be chosen and printed. There are, but not for all the disciplines," Popa specified at the presentation of the Education Ministry's 6-month stocktaking report. 

He maintained that this year, for the first time, over 500,000 pupils, 1st to 6th grade will benefit from new textbooks at 63 disciplines. 

"A number of 105 new titles are in the working at the Didactic and Pedagogical Publishing House, of which, a first, there are 40 translations into the languages of the minorities in Romania for over 2.6 million copies. (...) Still as a first, we have textbooks that are printed in a limited edition, such disciplines have never been of interest to publishing houses in Romania because the costs per copy would be very high. (...) The reprinted textbooks are already in the storehouses of the county schools inspectorates, being contracted and achieved by the publishing houses with which the Education Ministry already has ongoing contracts," minister Valentin Popa further said.