Once again, the start of the school year is marked by parents' criticism of the high costs that their families have to bear in terms of uniforms, transportation, cafeterias and all kinds of educational materials. In Lanzarote, school transportation is free and cafeterias have public subsidies.
The usual problem, which concentrates the complaints of all groups, is the exorbitant prices of textbooks, which also cannot be used from one year to the next, despite the fact that the law requires that the book not be changed for four consecutive courses. But in practice, trickery is the order of the day and many school books, especially those of the youngest children, are books in which one writes because one works on them and it is very difficult for them to be reused. Sometimes the publishers change the covers, but the content of the book remains practically the same.
The Administration: "measures to compensate for inequalities"
Rafael Juan González Rovaina, general director of Educational Promotion, explained in an interview granted to LA VOZ, what is currently the policy followed in the Ministry of Education regarding "compulsory education for the acquisition of books and school material". At the moment, the Ministry is working on the Law of Compensation of Inequalities, which is already embodied in a draft. "Our objective is not to establish a generalized measure of free books, but a measure of compensation of inequalities: if we give free books to the rich, absolutely nothing is compensated," he said.
Currently, each student receives aid based on income level, and sometimes the aid becomes the free use of books and school material. For this, the Ministry, from 2001 to 2006, has invested a total of 7 million euros.
This money is given to the schools and specifically this school year has been allocated 1,565,000 euros to serve about 20,000 students from all the islands. Of this money, Lanzarote has been allocated 84,590 euros in school material, which represents an amount of between 80 and 160 euros for each student. González Rovaina assures that so far they have attended to all the centers that have requested help: 80% of the centers in the Canary Islands.
Stock of books
He explained that "the books are given to the students as a loan, the centers must be making a stock of books since 2001 because many can be reused". This means that the measure is not annual, but is accumulating and each center will have a remaining stock of books.
The school council of each center is responsible for managing that money, which it receives directly from the Canary Islands Government. This aid is distributed based on the income level of the families, but the money is not given directly to the parents, but the books or school material they need are awarded to each child.
The booksellers: "free, but well managed"
Almost everyone seems to agree on this issue. Manuel Barón, commercial director of the Babón bookstore, in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, explained to this newspaper that, in his opinion, free education would be fine as long as it was well managed, and that it should be regulated in the same way as the pharmaceutical sector, to avoid intrusion. "If large stores could sell aspirins, pharmacists would protest," he said. Small booksellers are the ones who earn the least in this distribution chain, the ones who have a smaller profit margin because they do not make the large purchases that department stores do. In addition, he added, "we have a higher cost of personnel, we risk more and we earn less".
He stated that "that discount that department stores make is practically our profit margin; the publishers give us a price, but the maximum prices are fixed by law, we can lower on the profit margins that we have and that are very small". He assures that in his store they also have stationery and office supplies, and that the profits from textbooks are far below those produced by any other item.
The students: "generalized free education"
The students also advocate for the generalized free provision of textbooks in compulsory education. The Union of Students of the Canary Islands (UDECA) worked on the preliminary draft of the LOE and from the beginning they included the free provision of textbooks among their proposals. Alberto Álvarez, president of UDECA, stated in an interview granted yesterday to this newspaper, that in March the draft of the new law was published and that article had been removed.
"This year textbooks are more expensive than last year, the cost of textbooks last year was 6 points below the cost of living and this year it is at 2 points; if free education cannot be fully assumed by the Ministry, let the Canary Islands Government assume the rest," he said. He acknowledged that it is a difficult goal but they cite as an example the administrations of the island of La Gomera and other communities such as La Rioja or Asturias, which take care of all these costs.
