Schools can choose textbooks from February

Schools can choose textbooks from February 12, after 3 years of the provincial People's Committee being in charge of this.

The circular on textbook selection in general schools issued by the Ministry of Education and Training at the end of 2023, effective from February 12, clearly states that the textbook selection council of each school is established by the principal. Each school is a council. In particular, general schools with many levels of education have a council for each level.

Thus, the selection of textbooks in general schools will return to the way it was in 2020 - the first year of implementing the 2018 generaleducation program. In the past three school years, the textbook selection council was established by the Provincial People's Committee and each subject at each level was a council, and schools were only allowed to contribute opinions.

The textbooks offered for selection are from the list approved by the Ministry of Education and Training. Currently, there are three sets of books under the new program: Connecting knowledge with life , Creative horizons and Kite.

Math book for grade 2 belongs to the Creative Horizon book series. Photo: Vietnam Education Publishing House — Math book for grade 2 belongs to the *Creative Horizon* book series. Photo: *Vietnam Education Publishing House*

The textbook selection council established by the school includes: principal, vice principal, head of professional group, teacher representative, parent representative. The number of members is odd, minimum 11 people. Schools with less than 10 classes must have a minimum of 5 council members.

The Ministry stipulates that people who have participated in compiling, publishing, approving, and distributing textbooks and their relatives; people working at publishing houses and organizations that have textbooks are not allowed to participate in the council.

Regarding the process, all teachers of each subject will participate in choosing books for that subject. Teachers will research the books, write comments and evaluate them.

Then, the head of the professional group meets with the teachers to discuss and vote to select a book for each subject. The selected book must have more than 50% of the teachers voting. If this percentage is not reached, the professional group must discuss, analyze and vote again.

After the second vote, if no book is still chosen by more than half of the teachers, the professional group chooses the book with the highest number of votes in the two votes.

From there, the school council discusses and proposes the list to the head of the school. The school prepares a dossier and sends it to the Department of Education and Training. Finally, the provincial People's Committee approves the list of textbooks for local schools.

With the policy of "one program, many textbooks", eliminating the publishing monopoly, each subject currently has many books from different compilation units. Therefore, localities and schools need to choose books that are suitable to the socio -economic characteristics of the locality and the conditions for organizing teaching and learning at schools.

Letting the provincial People's Committee decide on textbook selection as in the past three years is considered to create problems, such as creating a monopoly on textbooks in the locality or teachers and students not really being able to choose the books. Many opinions say that this also leads to a lack of objectivity, transparency, and disrespect for the opinions of teachers, schools, and parents.

Duong Tam

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