All publishers allowed to produce, sell prescribed textbooks

JAKARTA (JP): The government threw its weight behind publishers' calls to be allowed to publish prescribed school textbooks on Thursday, saying it would be helpful to the government's efforts to provide textbooks for schools throughout the country.

"The government has limited resources for the procurement of prescribed school textbooks. We have to cooperate with various institutions, including publishers, to address the problem," Minister of National Education Abdul Malik Fajar told reporters after opening a seminar here on Thursday.

Allowing publishers to enter such business, would help efforts to meet the increasing demand for prescribed school textbooks, he added.

Malik Fajar was responding to a call by the Indonesian Publishers Association (IKAPI) that the government allow all publishers to produce and sell prescribed school textbooks, currently dominated by certain publishers who obtain the right through "unfair" bidding process.

The tender system has been widely criticized as being rampant with collusion and corruption.

However, he added, the government and IKAPI would work together to monitor the quality of the textbooks produced by the publishers so that they met national standards and were according to the national curricula.

In addition, Malik Fajar said, schools would also have the freedom of choosing their own textbooks according to their needs.

Currently, schools do not have the authority to choose their own textbooks. The prescribed textbooks were supplied by the government.

The head of the Book Center (Pusbuk) at the Ministry of National Education, Agam Suchad, told The Jakarta Post that in the future, Pusbuk would no longer produce prescribed school textbooks and that schools would be free to choose their own textbooks.

Pusbuk will also maintain its function of controlling the quality of the school textbooks produced by the publishers to ensure they were in accordance with school curricula.

"The government will still have to control the quality of school textbooks, from the quality of the writers up to the production process. Pusbuk will study the books before and after they are published," Agam said.

Agam also said that to enable schools to buy textbooks from publishers, the government would provide funds in the form of a block grant. (07)