Miteva: Instead of textbooks, the government scraped scripts and temporary materials for half a million euros

Marija Miteva, spokesperson of VMRO-DPMNE/Photo: VMRO-DPMNE

In anticipation of the new textbooks that the Ministry of Education and Science announced for the end of October or the beginning of November, for the lessons of the first, second, fourth and fifth grades, VMRO-DPMNE accused the Ministry of Education and Culture of spending 32.581.158 denars on temporary materials or €530.000.

- Half a million euros are paid for so-called scripts, which will serve once. The government's inability to provide textbooks on time is covered, and space is created for individual profits. The Ministry of Education and Science announces a competition through the pedagogical service. According to the digitalization concept, digital textbooks were planned for the first and fourth grade, but they failed to digitize them, so they withdrew them. According to the data we have, they called the same authors this year, who came to the competition and the same books, which were supposed to be digital, divided them into parts and thus made the temporary learning materials for the first and fourth grades.  For the second and fifth grades, they called the same authors, here they added a few new ones and they prepared textbooks according to the curricula. Of these textbooks, which are probably still being translated and are not final, parts of them were used to prepare the temporary materials so that they would have at least something ready for the first of September, announced today Marija Miteva, spokeswoman for VMRO-DPMNE.

According to her, this means that the children will learn from materials, which the government managed to scavenge before the very beginning of the school year, because they have not taken anything for years.

-And instead of new textbooks, we have a compilation of temporary materials from last year's textbooks and part of the new ones for which the Ministry of Education and Science paid €530.000. While teachers, students and parents try to cope with the total collapse, experiments that are a complete alternative to the textbook cost thousands of euros. Here are three completely logical questions that the Ministry of Education and Science is obliged to answer. First, who approved these materials to be an integral part of the student's educational process, and second, who and why set this enormous price for temporary learning materials, some of which are a compilation of last year's teaching material? And thirdly and most importantly, who benefits from double printing when textbooks could be printed instead of temporary materials? Is it paid twice for the same work and does someone take a large commission for this?, Miteva asks, stressing that this is  another huge scandal in the education system from which someone profited €530.000 for temporary learning materials.

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