THE School Textbook Printing and Distribution Committee held a coordination meeting yesterday to discuss the printing and distribution of textbooks for the 2020-2021 academic year.

Speaking at the meeting held at the Ministry of Information, Union Minister for Education Dr Myo Thein Gyi said there are about 50,000 basic education schools across the nation, including private schools and monastic education schools, which provide education to more than 9.7 million students. He expressed his gratitude to MoI and printing houses for their cooperation on ensuring these students all receive their textbooks every year.

The Union Minister said they are working to finalize the textbooks and teacher guidebooks for the new curriculum in the next academic year. He said while ensuring the new textbooks meet international standards takes time, it needs to be finished swiftly so that the printing and distributing process is not delayed.

Next, committee chairman and Deputy Minister for Information, U Aung Hla Tun spoke a few words. He said MoI’s undocumented major contribution to the nation is printing the textbooks for students all across Myanmar. He said the number of subjects, classes and students have increased through the years and this has required them to outsource to private printing houses.

The Deputy Minister said they outsourced 69 million books last year but it was estimated at increase to 77 million this year. He said they will utilize the lessons learned and challenges faced from the previous year to make this year’s overall process more efficient.

Next, Textbook Distribution Subcommittee Chairman Deputy Minister U Win Maw Tun said it is important to ensure students receive the textbooks on time and this year they are printing in correspondence with the number of villages, wards, districts and townships in the country.

This was followed by briefings on their respective duties and tasks by committee vice-chairman Permanent Secretary U Myo Myint Maung, and committee secretary Director-General U Aung Myo Myint.

Afterwards, attendees began discussing the finer details of printing and distributing the school textbooks and Union Minister Dr Myo Thein Gyi provided suggestions where necessary.

MNA

(Translated by Zaw Htet Oo)