According to our sources, the deadline is October 10. Principal of the #25 school named after Nikol Aghbalyan Gayane Amiryan told us that the students of her school have already paid for the textbooks and only a few payments remain. This is officially called the reproduction of textbooks. With this purpose, the Ministry of Education and Sciences gives out a price list to all schools every year. For example, this year all the textbooks except English and Russian are free for 1st-3rd grade students. The prices for borrowing books range from 250-400 AMD. According to director of the “Textbook Circulation” fund Garegin Gareginjants, compared to last year, the amount of money paid for textbooks makes up 96 percent, in other words, 806,000,000 AMD. It is necessary to have 50 million AMD to print one textbook for all the students of Armenia with 45-50,000 copies.
A parent says that the textbooks given to the children are often in poor conditions. Another bad side is that the borrowed books aren’t used that much during the school year and the parent is forced to spend money on buying books preferred by the school. Another thing is that the school doesn’t use the money given to make new books. Textbook sales have turned into a business in the Armenian market and it has gotten to the point where prices go up as more and more people buy the textbooks on sale and Armenians with little money aren’t able to buy them. Arsen, a young man who sells books at the subway, complains and says that textbook sales aren’t doing too well. He knows the “borrowed” books by heart. As for books that can’t be found, G. Gareginyants says that sometimes they don’t have the given textbook, but they are trying to come up with solutions what with the 12-year system. Gareginyants admits that there is a deficit of textbooks. He informed that this year, according to the new law on education, the “Armenian Language”, “Armenian alphabet” and “Math” textbooks have been printed with money provided from the state budget and will be given free of charge to kindergarten and elementary students. As for the contents of the textbooks, G. Gareginyan assures that the newly printed books can’t be perfect the first year and there may be flaws. He advises the people complaining about the contents of the textbooks to complain to the authors or the publishing house. He hopes that there will be newly printed textbooks for at least students studying from 1st to 9th grade, if not 12th, in the next four years.
Karine Mkrtchyan, a mother of three, says that she was forced to pay 30,000 AMD for textbooks for her children, including the school funds. Since she didn’t have enough, she asked the school administration (she didn’t want to mention the school) to make some exceptions. After she applied, the administration gave her a 7,000 AMD discount. There are schools where the administration provides a discount for children of deceased soldiers and multi-member families. Deputy mayor of Yerevan Kamo Areyan touched upon the issue of schools collecting money for textbooks during a recent press conference. He said that this was voluntary and didn’t consider it obligatory. However, that “doesn’t have an influence” on collecting money and it continues to flourish.