New Academic Year with New Textbooks

Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sports, Zhanna Andreasyan, wrote on her Facebook page:

“Today, the results of the competition for new textbooks for the classes transitioning to the new criteria have been summarized. Dear teachers, dear parents, for many years we have complained about textbooks; for a very long time—more than 10 years—no new textbooks have been written. Now we have the opportunity to see new textbooks in schools starting from the new academic year. How good they will be depends on us as well; we need to read, point out problems, strengths, improve, and demand. Writing a textbook is not an easy task, and we won't get the desired results right away. We need to create the opportunity to write textbooks, to form groups and conditions. The first steps have been taken. There are new groups in the field, new authors. The works of many of them have been guaranteed. We still have a long way to go in improving the work being done, adapting to deadlines, and refining the assessment system. Ultimately, the most important message of the new criteria is the pedagogical freedom of the teacher, including the choice of quality textbooks and educational materials. I am glad that teachers have had a decisive voice in the process of guaranteeing new textbooks as evaluators.”