Textbook publishers upset unapproved manuals are sold in schools

Article 53 of the December 16, 2021 law on the organization and promotion of the textbook publishing sector stipulates that manuals and texts books not registered on the official list of school manuals cannot be imposed for purchase and used for official examinations.

Unfortunately, it has been discovered that this new school year again, this law is not respected by several institutions in Cameroon.

“The reality is that teachers who go against this law are mostly those in the private education sector. They manipulate parents and mount pressure on them to buy workbooks published by them” a trade unionist of the National Syndicate of Textbook Publishers, Ngassa Appolinaire reveals.

Publishers regret more the fact that unapproved textbooks and other manuals are used in schools more than the homologated ones thus washing their efforts down the drain.

They qualify the continuous sale of unapproved manuals in many schools as gross abuse of the law which is not only affecting publishers adversely but the children as well.

“This act is strangulating homologated textbooks leaving the publishers with nothing to benefit. I pity the pupils and students using those textbooks and workbooks not authorized. There are children who pass but are blank in the head simply because they do copy and paste. They go for workbooks whereas they have not studied what is in the textbooks. This shortcut is very dangerous to the education of children. The law organizing and promoting this sector needs to be scrupulously respected” Ngassa Appolinaire explains.

Just like textbook publishers, civil society leaders also expect education authorities take quick action before another set of blank students produce humiliating results in official examinations as was the case last academic year.