The Ministry of Education and Youth says textbooks will be distributed to primary and secondary schools in time for the start of the 2024/25 academic year in September.

“We are way down the wicket with the procurement process. So our high schools and our Principals can be assured that you will get the support materials to complement the teaching and learning process,” said Permanent Secretary in the Ministry, Dr. Kasan Troupe.

She was addressing Monday’s (August 26) press conference to provide a report on Jamaica’s performance in the May/June 2024 CSEC and CAPE examinations, at the Ministry’s offices in Kingston.

Dr. Troupe said over the years, primary schools were prioritised in an effort to reduce the issue of low performance being carried over into high schools.

“Since last year, we have refocused on our high schools. We gave the grade-seven and the grade-10 students – those who are moving into their subject programmes –textbooks for all those areas in full, and for the others we gave 10 per cent. This year, we will be looking at grade eight and I think grade nine, for their full support, and then the others will get their 10 per cent top-up,” she detailed.

Meanwhile, Dr. Troupe shared that the Ministry spent a significant sum to resource primary schools last year, as several textbooks were lost during the pandemic.

“A number of our students did not return some of those textbooks, so we had to replenish all of the books for last year. Coming out of that, those books would have a life of three to five years within our primary schools. So the textbooks are already in our primary schools to support the teaching and learning process,” she explained.

Dr. Troupe added that the Ministry will provide workbooks to complement those that will be purchased by parents at the early primary level.