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Following is the transcript of remarks by the Secretary for Education, Mr Eddie Ng Hak-kim, at a media session after the 40th Anniversary Cocktail Reception of Hong Kong Professional Teachers' Union today (May 4):
Reporter: ...schools reflecting that the measure to stabilise textbook price by separating the price of textbooks and the teaching and learning materials is useless...
Secretary for Education: On the subject of the pricing of the textbooks, we understand the concerns in the last several years. Parents have been concerned about the increasing prices and the cost incurred. That's why last year we made a point to look at the whole thing of the electronic textbook (eTextbook) as one option. The other one is we have been negotiating with the publishers and the textbook developers on how to manage the whole process. For example, we separated the textbooks for the students versus the teaching materials, hopefully that will bring the cost down. If you look at this and last year as an example, these were the only two years we had the general increase lower than the inflation rate, this is the first point. The second point is, for those at the junior secondary schools, which we have already done with the separation of textbooks and the teaching materials, actually the average increase is much lower than the average. So, if you look at it from that angle, it seems that it has started producing the type of effect. Of course, this is only the part one. Part two is we are still looking at the senior secondary part, that will be the part two of the exercise. We need more time to look into this one but hopefully, we will start seeing the effect in terms of the cost lower than the inflation rate.
(Please also refer to the Chinese portion of the transcript of remarks.)
Ends/Saturday, May 4, 2013
Issued at HKT 20:20
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