Basic Learning Materials Initiative

Publishing involves a wide segment of society, not only in terms of the readerbut also as regards the process of taking a manuscript from the author through its production and distribution to its readers. In this, it is, perhaps, not very different from any other commodity.

The difference between publishing and many other commodities is that printed materials convey explicit values, ideas, æsthetics, knowledge and information. Books and other printed materials are part of the mass media. Access to and control of these media are sources of power. In a reading society, books demand public involvement and concern. Publishing is widely regarded as a public service and, to be successful, a publisher has to understand the social and moral expectations of his or her profession.

The present international system for distributing knowledge involves not only publishers but also television networks, film distributors, news agencies, databases and, increasingly, the companies that develop and control the hardware and software used for electronic data processing and telecommunication. Academic and scientific institutions play a role not only in the creation of knowledge but also in its distribution. Individual scholars and intellectuals are themselves very much part of the system.

Despite the fact that most developing countries have facilities for book production (especially for typesetting and printing) and that some developing countries print a large number of the books published by industrialized countries, the printing technology used is almost exclusively developed and produced in industrialized countries which also control technological innovations.

Most countries have the basic technology needed for paper production, but a few industrial nations control the world's paper industry and demand high prices for paper.

The trade in books tends to be one-sided and consists of the export of books from industrial to developing countries. This is especially the case where the major languages are concerned and, indeed, both English and French publishers depend on overseas trade for about half their sales. Book exports are, because of the very nature of books, a medium for information and so are not only of interest to the major industrial nations as sources of profit but also as a means of advancing political aims. In today's global society, we all call upon one another for information, which has become one of the highest valued currencies in the world. Some countries are, however, more dependent than othersand developing countries in particular rely on the knowledge, research and information produced by the industrialized countries, just as they depend greatly on developed countries for book supplies. The international infrastructure for creating and disseminating knowledge is complex and unequally structured, and is controlled by only a handful of the world's industrial nations.

The fact of inequality is clear. The bulk of the world's scientific research is done in a few of the industrial nations - notably the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Soviet Union. It has been estimated that close to one-quarter of the world's expenditures for research and development are made in the United States. The major universities, with their well-equipped libraries and laboratories, are located in a handful of industrial nations. These institutions attract the best scholars and, incidentally, train a significant portion of the highly educated personnel from the developing world . . . Not only are the physical means of book creation and distribution (that is, publishing) located in the industrial nations but also the decision making apparatus for scientific and educational knowledge in general. The major journals are edited in a few nations - largely the United States, the United Kingdom, and, for the francophone world, France. Much of the rest of the world is in a peripheral relation to these major intellectual centres. The decisions made by journal editors, book publishers, and others who are gatekeepers of knowledge reflect the intellectual and scientific environment in which they function. (1)

The nations of the developing world, faced with this international system for the dissemination of information and knowledge, find themselves at a considerable disadvantage when they want to develop or strengthen indigenous cultural and education systems and a suitable infrastructure for the support of such systems.

Textbooks and other learning materials have often been regarded as just another commodity. They are not; they are much more.

Strategic planning for the provision of basic learning materials must be viewed as an element in a much wider strategy for development. The promotion of educational publishing is probably the cheapest and most efficient way of ensuring that developing countries build up more adequate systems for the dissemination of knowledge and gain access to the information that can give them a more equal position in the world.

In project design, there is a parallel between food aid and textbook provision. Both respond to an immediate demand and both seek to alleviate a symptom rather than deal with the cause of the problem. In emergencies or war situations, this kind of intervention may be appropriate, but if real change is going to occur other measures are needed. Real change demands sustainability and the local, social and economic conditions that are able to provide the necessary resources for the continuation of the process started by the project.

In the following pages, book development is described as the process needed not only to establish sustainable systems for the provision of good quality learning materials for schools and non-formal education programmes, but also to reach the wider goal of education for all: the creation and consolidation of a culture of reading in developing countries. Consequently, though this guide focuses on the production and distribution of books and other printed materials, and especially the materials needed to improve educational achievement, the term 'book development' lends itself to a wider interpretation encompassing the whole range of media that control the dissemination of information and knowledge in society.

There is no doubt that improvement in the quality of education depends to a great extent on whether relevant and high quality books and other learning materials can be made available to teachers and students. The question is how to do this and, since learning materials are consumables, how to do it on a sustainable basis. This is the subject of the present guide.

Book development has always been seen within certain circles as a motor for general development. From this point of view, access to books and printed materials and education and development are inextricably linked. UNESCO's constitution is thus replete with a commitment to books.

In the 1950s, international attention centred on trade and copyright issues and what was called the free flow of books across borders. In the next decades, UNESCO produced several reports (2) that took stock of the global situation with regard to books. The solution to the 'book hunger' identified in developing countries was seen to be to ensure that books from the developed countries could be imported and distributed freely in developing countries. As a consequence, the Florence Agreement (3) and the Universal Copyright Convention (4) were adopted by UNESCO's General Conference and are now widely respected and observed in developed countries - though many developing countries have still not signed these conventions.

During the 1960s, the book development movement took shape and emphasized the need to establish publishing industries in the developing countries and to give them priority. A number of meetings were held and 1972 was proclaimed International Book Year.

Despite the enhanced awareness of the importance of books among governments and international organizations that followed this worldwide activity, the book development movement did not succeed in the following decades in attracting sufficient interest and funding to encourage the creation and growth of national publishing capacities in many developing countries.

Textbooks and learning

Textbooks are a rare commodity in most developing countries. One book per student (in any subject) is the exception, not the rule, and the rule in most classrooms is, unfortunately, severe scarcity or the total absence of textbooks. Even middle-income countries such as Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela, have failed to maintain a regular supply of textbooks over the past fifteen years. For the majority of the world's students, access to basic tools for learning is so limited as to constitute a major crisis.

This was not always the case: before the global drive to achieve universal access led to the expansion of school systems, textbooks were in ample supply in the few schools that did exist. These schools mainly served the élites, who could afford to buy imported books that helped prepare their children for future interaction with European schools and organizations. Following the generalized expansion of the world's school systems during the 1960s and 1970s to serve broader segments of society, textbooks became scarce, and began to be used differently. For one thing, schooling has expanded beyond the élites to reach poorer families who may not be able to afford to buy textbooks for their children. Second, students now must become literate in the language and culture prevalent in their own countries, rather than in that of European countries, so that providing enough textbooks with relevant information in the local language has become much more of a challenge. (5)

This century has witnessed an unprecedented expansion of the educational sector worldwide. The recognition of the importance of education for economic growth has thus brought with it a widespread and ever-growing demand for educational opportunities and services. Further pressure was put upon the educational sector with the adoption by the international community of the World Declaration on Education For All in 1990 which affirmed education to be a basic human right.

The drive for Education for All highlights the need for quality, in terms of relevance and academic performance, and for providing a learning environment which encourages children to learn how to improve their lives. There is now an international emphasis on the qualitative aspects of education, such as teacher training, curriculum development, the monitoring and sustainable provision of quality learning materials, which has been spearheaded by the EFA Forum Initiative on the Provision of Basic Learning Materials and supported by a range of internationally funded projects

Though enrolments in schools in developing countries have gone up rapidly, the resources allocated in developing countries to education have not increased proportionately. The expansion of the education sector has, despite the number of enrolled students, resulted in a smaller budget in many developing countries.

In education, quality is linked to how efficiently learning takes place. Educational achievement is believed to be strongly determined by various factors, such as the teacher's subject knowledge and pedagogical skills, the time spent by pupils actually learning their lessons, and the availability and quality of textbooks and other learning materials.

The levels of available reading materials determine the kind of education a country is able to provide. When books and teachers' manuals are scarce, tuition is likely to be limited to rote memorization of simple, often inaccurate information, whereas it seems to be that where there is money for books and other kinds of learning materials, teachers are better qualified and use a range of educational approaches.

Though access to books and other learning materials is the most cost-effective means of raising the level of educational achievement, adequate funding is rarely given priority in government budgets.

The explosive growth in the demand for educational services poses serious problems for Ministries of Education almost everywhere, especially in the poorest developing countries. With growing enrolments, a need to reduce public spending on education has often made governments cut funding for recurrent non-salary expenditure (such as chalk, maps, furniture, laboratory equipment, textbooks, workbooks and other books). This explains why, in many countries, the rapid expansion in enrolments has been accompanied by anobservable decline in the quality of education.

Though this reduction in spending is understandable, it is not a wise choice and the savings are not enough to left it. Statistics show that no developing country currently allocates more than 1 per cent of its primary education budget for the purchase of textbooks, even though an increase of only 1 or 2 per cent in most countries would ensure that each pupil had one textbook per subject. (6)

The lack of official government commitment revealed in policies and budgets remains one of the major obstacles to the development of sustainable national systems for book provision in many developing countries. The role played by a national publishing industry in social and economic development is similarly underestimated. Without the establishment of a favourable policy, textbook projects will have only a limited impact, and no real change will come about.

Book development or book provision?

The 1970s and 1980s witnessed a growing awareness of the importance of instructional materials for educational achievement. This awareness, however, led various international agencies to focus on book provision as an area of investment and to a concern with textbooks and teachers' guides as opposed to general book development.

Today, most activities in the area of book development focus on textbook development for education. Little effort is made to stimulate the growth of general publishing in developing countries. The vast majority of projects in the area of book development are, typically, a textbook programme within a bigger education project, and the term 'book development' rarely occurs.

Over the last twenty years, many curricula, textbook and book development projects have been designed to improve not only the quality of curriculum materials but also the effectiveness of the production, funding and distribution of instructional materials in developing countries. National curriculum development units have been created in most countries within the Ministry of Education, and many Ministries have established printing presses under government control. Some countries have established Book Councils (which tend to be dominated by private sector publishing) and external donors have increasingly funded initiatives to support textbook provision.

A high percentage of these initiatives and projects have, howeve and recurrent costs. In terms of books available and in use in classrooms, the results are more than disappointing. The book situation throughout the world is, in relative terms, probably worse now than it ever was.

In 1985, the World Bank published a General Operational Review of Textbooks, researched and written by Barbara Searle. Among other things, this document concluded:

The review makes clear that at least some of the projects recognized that textbook publishing is complex and highly technical; that it requires professional competence in many specialities, and that developing a good textbook takes time. Yet even with this recognition, projects underestimated the difficulties. Of nine projects surveyed, only three left behind functioning textbook systems. Beyond this, completed projects provide evidence for shortfalls in every aspect of textbook provision: poor quality books, inadequate distribution systems, inability to establish and maintain production schedules, inadequate procedures for handling paper procurement, teacher training activities out of phase with book publication, poor co-ordination between curriculum and manuscript development, and above all a failure to establish institutions that can continue to provide good quality books after project completion. While ten years is a short time in the life of the Bank, and there has been - until now - no systematic attempt to summarize project experience with textbooks, one would expect nevertheless some institutional learning so that the design of new textbook projects would address the problems more effectively.

Many developing countries have indicated a lack of funding as the main cause of inappropriate basic learning materials for schools and non-formal programmes. However, the issue of funding is often exaggerated (see above), and a careful analysis of the broader situation shows that the problems related to establishing a sustainable system for the provision of quality learning materials stem from the complexity of the issue and not solely from insufficient funding.

As another example, diagnostic reports from Ministries of Education often suggested drop-outs were the main source of wastage in the educational system. Research, however, shows that repetition is the main source of wastage. Students drop out after five or more years of schooling, at only the second or third grade level. Therefore, of all the students attending school, only a few of them are promoted annually to the next grade and finish primary education is not drop-outs but chronic repetition, which leads to early drop-outs.

Despite the fact that many textbook and curriculum development projects have successfully met their objectives, they have not succeeded in establishing sustainable systems for book provision, either in terms of economy or in terms of developing the various resources needed for such a system. In other words, once the project came to an end, no more books were produced and distributed.

This is a question of problem identification. A majority of book projects have not dealt with the source of the problem - the absence of a thriving publishing sector in a given country - but only with a symptom of it, namely, the lack of books for use in schools. The parallel between food aid programmes and textbook programmes has already been mentioned. The apparent contradiction between the many projects and the poor results can be explained in part by the fact that the majority of the projects focused on the provision of learning materials instead of what we call 'book development', that is, developing the necessary infrastructure and environment to sustain and meet the need for learning materials and other printed materials.

The failure to identify correctly the problem of book provision for the education sector can, to a large extent, be ascribed to the fact that learning and teaching materials are widely considered to be a non-market commodity by educators and policy-makers.

But the lack of a lasting or sustainable impact of the many textbook-related projects in the last twenty years is, perhaps, due to a widespread ignorance among decision-makers and educational managers of the professional skills required in publishing. An over-simplified concept of publishing and book provision has led to an artificial isolation of educational materials from general publishing - which, in turn, has led to a lack of recognition of the importance of comprehensive policies and planning for the book sector in educational and general development.

Very few professional publishers have been involved in project design. This has resulted in projects which were not able to develop links with the publishing sector and to exist independently, and because there were no such links, the projects could not extend their impact beyond the lifetime of the project itself.

The availability of skilled personnel differs from one country to another, but the lack of comprehensive planning and of status accorded to skills in the publishing business have often prevented the appointment of skilled people, even when they were available. The lack of appreciation of the complexities of the industrial aspects of publishing has left many skilled people unable to influence decision-making. As a consequence, many textbook projects and national programmes have suffered from uninformed planning and management as well as an inadequate allocation of staff and resources.

The fact that the provision of learning materials for schools and non-formal education programmes has been seen as a responsibility of the Ministry of Education means that the design of programmes has been left to educators. Such people may have little awareness of the professional skills required to produce and distribute quality learning materials successfully, of the institutional implications in terms of reorganization, staffing, budgeting and so on, of the economics of educational publishing or of the general difficulty in marrying educational concerns with the concerns of commercial publishing.

At the national level, there is an absence of national policies related to the provision of learning materials for basic education programmes in developing countries. The need for policy-making, planning and management has rarely been recognized. The absence of clear government policies for the provision of educational materials at various levels of schooling and for the book sector in general has made it difficult for any private publishing sector to be involved in a constructive manner.

In any textbook project, the provision of learning materials involves many sectors of society and involves people and activities which are normally separate. Traditional partnerships in education prevent both governments and agencies from dealing effectively with the problem.

Donors are often debarred by their mandate from supporting activities (such as establishing or funding an efficient distribution system or providing storage facilities in schools) which may not, at first, seem connected to the provision of learning materials but which are essential for the long-term success of such programmes.

Management and planning are at the heart of the problem. It is difficult to achieve a satisfactory balance between the educational concerns related to quality, content and presentation, use and equal distribution of learning materials, and the industrial practices related to more technical and financial concerns such as production, distribution and economy.

An understanding of book provision systems, and of the co-operation and co-ordination required, is basic to the success of any efforts made to establish sustainable systems for the provision of learning materials.

The wider perspective - a culture of reading

In countries with a thriving publishing sector, a certain dynamic and co-operation have been developed between commercial general publishing and non-commercial educational publishing. The interdependence between educational publishing and general publishing is institutionalized within the book sector and supported by a general valuation and status accorded to books and those who work in the book sector.

In societies where there is widespread illiteracy, conditions are different. There is seldom an appreciation of books, in other words, there is not a general demand for them. There is not even an awareness of books, which means that even if books were to be made accessible and affordable, it would not follow that there would be a demand for them. The lack of a reading culture is a much more difficult and far-reaching issue for general development than is that of the provision of learning materials for schools and non-formal education programmes

The goal of Education for All, which, among other things, includes the development of literate societies in the developing world, cannot be attained just by providing quality learning materials to schools. If people are to stay literate, they must continue the habit of reading (books and magazines, newspapers, various labels, posters and signs) in their adult lives. Book development projects should not only raise issues limited to whether or not the government should subsidize instructional materials, but should also deal with problems such as how to make people read outside the school, how to generate a general need for books, how to create a general appreciation of books and printed materials, how to make people and governments willing to spend money on books and give them priority over other things and, not least, how to prevent a relapse into functional illiteracy.

A precondition for the creation of a literate society is the creation of a culture of reading and writing. Reading campaigns and various programmes which create an awareness and general appreciation of books and printed materials must be integral components of any literacy programme.

A literate society is not possible without the existence of a market-oriented publishing sector, or without book development and book promotion. Local authors need to write books for local readers and in the languages they use.

In societies with widespread illiteracy, the provision of textbooks and other learning materials is unable to depend on an existing publishing industry. Provided it allows for the involvement, development and growth of private sector publishing, the development of a well-functioning system for the production and distribution of basic learning materials may be a first step towards creating a reading society and a market for books and other printed materials. This might, ultimately, facilitate the production and distribution of educational materials.

The issue of book provision cannot be considered in isolation. It must not be limited to providing learning materials for use in classrooms but must include a mechanism for generating a wide range of printed materials needed by a reading society.

Getting the strategy right

This guide assumes that the provision of books for the education sector cannot be guaranteed on a sustainable basis unless the focus is shifted away from book provision itself to a more comprehensive approach to book development.

Book development was always seen as an element needed for the achievement of general development and was of importance for the education sector. Sadly, the shift of attention from publishing to education did not lead to increased co-operation within the book world itself. On the contrary, communication and co-operation between different agents in the book community, and especially between educators and publishers, are still far from what is needed.

The problems encountered by many book development projects are much the same as those outlined in 1985 by Barbara Searle (see page 19). The major issues in book provision remain:

1.long-term planning and intervention;
2. financing, affordability and sustainability;
3. curriculum and manuscript development: content, educational approach, presentation and layout;
4. availability of publishing skills;
5. availability of the necessary consumables for printing;
6. problems of manufacture;
7. problems of distribution;
8. the need to see instructional materials as an important element for creating a society in which all kinds of printed materials are produced and read.

Successful project approaches need to confront these issues. As the demand for support in the area of curriculum and textbook development has changed, so the design of projects has changed.

Fortunately, the trend is now to move towards a greater recognition of the complexity and inherent difficulties in building up sustainable publishing capacities in developing countries. This recognition is coupled with a growing understanding of the interdependence of the needs of the education sector and those of the publishing sector.

The problem of book provision for the education sector within the book sector bridges the gap between educational concerns related to relevance, content and presentation, use and adequate and equal provision, and issues of a more technical and commercial character, such as production, staffing, the availability of raw materials and skilled personnel, economy, distribution and sale. An analysis of book provision in terms of the book sector illustrates the fact that book projects are of concern not only to teachers and students but also to society as a whole.

The need for policies, forward planning, budgeting, training and co-operation across traditional sectors is hardly disputed, but providing a strong framework for the undertaking remains an elusive goal.

Planning book provision is a specialist task and demands careful data collection, systematic analysis and the extrapolation of information. However, in order to convince decision-makers to allocate sufficient resources to cover all aspects of book provision, it is necessary to make clear analyses by describing each of the steps in the process of developing, producing, and distributing learning materials, within a larger conceptual framework.

The book sector approach provides the elements for such a conceptual framework within which the many activities involved in book provision are described within the professional environment and in terms of their relationship to the set of values implicit in the government's educational policy.

This approach has proved to be a concise and flexible tool for letting people who have very different backgrounds understand one another as well as the situation they are trying to improve. Furthermore, using a common conceptual framework for needs assessment and project design facilitates the comparison of situations and strategies.


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