“Beginning in the 2020/21 school year, all students, a total of 1.2 million, will be receiving their textbooks absolutely free of charge”, the Ministry of Human Capacities’ Parliamentary State Secretary told reporters in Budapest on Monday.
Bence Rétvári explained: “In addition to lower and upper primary and secondary school children, the measures will also affect grade 13-16 vocational school students”.
“The distribution of free textbooks will cost 13.5 billion forints (EUR 38.2 million), which is earmarked in both this year’s and next year’s budget”, he told the press.
“Previously, the price of a package of textbooks could reach up to 20-30 thousand forints, but this sum will now fully remain with families”, the State Secretary noted.
“The government regards the supply of free textbooks as a form of family support, and feels it is important that in a family friendly country the future cost of school textbooks should not arise as an aspect when deciding to have children”, he stated.
“This was not always the case, and during the two left-wing government terms the price of lower school textbooks increased by 68 percent, those of upper school textbooks went up by 72 percent, and the price of high school textbooks went up by over 70 percent”, the Parliamentary State Secretary pointed out.
“Families had to put aside more and more money each year as the annual price of textbooks became increasingly high”, he noted, adding that in his opinion the reason for this was that the textbook market and orders were governed by business considerations.
“Foreign-owned companies often realised tens of billions of forints in profits, and the National Textbook Publishing House also suffered the fate of privatisation”, he said.
“In contrast, the current government wished to totally diverge from this approach with relation to both form and content”, Mr. Rétvári emphasised, adding “The state is now once again playing a role in the preparation and publication of textbooks”.
He highlighted the fact that state textbooks are published at a much lower cost that the books of private publishing houses, and require much less administration on the part of schools in view of the fact that it occurs via digital platforms. “Creating opportunities is also a priority consideration, meaning schools no longer have to choose between textbooks based on which is cheaper or more expensive, and accordingly orders can be fully adapted to the school’s and students’ profile”, he indicated.
“The production of textbooks is moving forward according to the usual schedule, and we will be able to assure that the fully free textbooks will arrive in all schools by the end of August”, he stated.