Tim za socijalno uključivanje i smanjenje siromaštva

Free textbooks for approximately 86,000 primary school students from first to eight grade are on their way to the schools.

The current Law on Textbooks envisages that free textbooks will only be awarded to socially vulnerable pupils, recipients of financial assistance. Thus children from materially vulnerable families are the first category of children for whom the state once again provided sets of textbooks. However, a new project by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, entitled “Procurement of Textbooks and Other Teaching Tools for Primary School Students”, based on a Government decision, expanded the list of pupils for whom textbooks are purchased with money from the Republic treasury. In addition to the socially vulnerable, this now covers primary school students with development impairments and disabilities, acquiring primary education according to individual educational plans, but based on the regular curriculum like their peers without development impairments. Likewise, it covers primary school students who are the third (and every subsequent) child in a family.

The budget of the Republic allocated RSD 571,747,000 for free textbooks for the forthcoming 2017/18 school year, with the right to receive textbooks from the state as a gift exercised by nearly twice as many primary school students than last year.

The public procurement procedure is under way for the development of adapted textbooks for children with development impairments, learning in accordance with adapted or amended programmes. Around RSD 30,000,000 have been allocated for this. Thus during the next school year, for example, blind or visually impaired students will receive free of charge textbooks with enlarged fonts and images, or in Braille.

Source: www.mpn.gov.rs