FREE BOOKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 18, 22 January 1944, Page 8

FREE BOOKS

PRIMARY SCHOOLS

ISSUE THIS YEAR

The first of the new textbooks to be issued free of cost to all primary schools, public and private, would be available at the opening' of the school year next month, said the Minister of Education (Mr. Mason) today. The event, he said, would mark the beginning of the realisation of a longcherished ideal held by the present Government. The project had been initiated in 1939, while the Prime Minister (Mr. Fraser) was Minister of Education. "Because of the shortage of paper and limitation of facilities for printing," said Mr. Mason, "the whole series cannot be issued immediately. The first books to be issued will be the text- ! books in arithmetic, and only those for Standard 1 will be available at the opening of the schools in. February, those for Standard 2 following a few months later. Uncertainty as to supplies of paper precludes any definite statement as to when other numbers of the series will issue, but there is every expectation of having the arithmetic books for Standards 3 and 4 for next year. The readers of all standards have for some considerable time been completed in draft form, and the textbooks for geography and history are practically complete. The printing problem, however, leaves it speculative as to when it may be possible to issue these." , The Minister stated that the textbooks had been the subject of much painstaking care. The precaution had been taken of testing the use of portions of the books in draft form, and the reactions of scholars and teachers had been obtained and noted. There was good assurance, therefore, for the belief that the textbooks would be accepted as a great advance on any that had gone before and would be greatly appreciated by those charged with the care of children in public and private schools alike.