Bookshop in Nairobi. [Photo/the-star.co.ke]
Leading textbook publishers have decried decrease in sales as schools and parents hold off buying books as they await the rollout of the new curriculum next month.
Anxiety has also gripped booksellers and publishers over the government plan to procure and distribute books to learning institutions, saying they will be rendered jobless since some of their published materials will become obsolete.
A veteran bookseller in Nyeri town, Khilan Chandulal Shah of Khimji Devshi Shah Bookshop is worried they may be pushed out of business once the curriculum is rolled out.
The bookseller says the one-textbook policy per academic subject and its distribution by the State will render him and other booksellers jobless.
“There are all indications that we will only be selling books when learners lose them or textbooks are defaced and we will not survive this way,” he says. Education Cabinet Secretary Fred Matiang’i says the ministry will from next month distribute free textbooks for six subjects to each student joining Form One on January 9.
Form One students will each receive textbooks for Mathematics, Kiswahili, English, Chemistry, Biology, and Physics when they report to secondary schools they have been placed. The CS spoke while he launched the Form One selection process at KICD on Monday. He said the books will bear the Government Coat of Arms logo to stop profiteers from re-selling them to bookshops for personal gain.
“The State will not go back on this initiative since so much money has been lost,” he said. The CS said the free textbooks will be officially flagged off on January 4 in what is meant to help bring equity for all students across the country. “We want to tell principals, do not ask any Form One student to come with textbooks.
This is how you achieve equity, we will buy books and take them to our children,” Matiang’i said. The new curriculum was launched on May 29 this year as a pilot project in 470 primary schools picked from all 47 counties.