Textbook prices increase from the 2019 - 2020 school year

On March 29, the Vietnam Education Publishing House announced that from the 2019-2020 school year, the selling price of textbooks for grades 1-12 will increase from 6,500 VND to 25,000 VND per set, with an average increase of 1,000 to 1,800 VND per book.

The plan has been approved and completed price registration procedures with the Ministry of Finance (Price Management Department) as follows:

Textbooks for the 2019-2020 school year will be published from April 2019 with a quantity of 108 million copies. The price list is publicly posted at bookstores of the Vietnam Education Publishing House, book and school equipment companies nationwide and on the website of the Vietnam Education Publishing House.

The list of textbooks for each grade is printed on the back cover of each book so that parents and students can choose the right name and quantity. To increase the reuse rate, the Vietnam Education Publishing House prints a warning on page 1 of all textbooks: "Please keep the textbooks to give to students in the next grade."

Explaining the reason for the price increase, the Vietnam Education Publishing House said that textbook prices have been registered with the Ministry of Finance since 2011 and have not changed in the past 8 years. Meanwhile, input costs such as labor, raw materials, transportation, etc. have all increased, causing the publishing and distribution of textbooks by the publisher to suffer losses in recent years.

Because textbooks are sensitive items that have an impact on the whole society, the Ministry of Education and Training has held many meetings to discuss the proposal to adjust the selling price of the Vietnam Education Publishing House and reported to the Prime Minister. At the meeting on March 29, the Party Committee of the Ministry of Education agreed to the policy of adjusting the current textbook prices in the direction of correctly and fully calculating salaries, direct costs, management costs, and asset depreciation.

The Ministry also requested the Vietnam Education Publishing House to review and adjust profits from other areas to offset losses in textbook business, ensuring that the adjusted price must be lower than the correct and full price, and to share difficulties with parents.

In 2019, Vietnam Education Publishing House plans to donate 25,000 sets of textbooks to children of war invalids and martyrs, and families in especially difficult circumstances; mobilize donations, support, and reserve textbooks to be ready to support localities when natural disasters and floods occur.

Previously, at the end of February, the press reported that the Vietnam Education Publishing House quietly increased the price of textbooks. Immediately after that, the Ministry of Education confirmed that there was no policy to increase prices. In early March, this Publishing House issued a notice confirming that the price of textbooks for the 2019-2020 school year would remain the same as the past 8 years. To compensate, the company cut costs related to transportation, warehousing, etc.