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Prices of Over 95% of Primary and Secondary School Textbooks Increase Average Rise of 3.2% Higher Than Inflation Rate

  • 2017.07.17

Summer holidays are upon us, and while students are taking a break, parents are bracing for the annual routine of getting children's textbooks ready for the next school year.  The Consumer Council's timely, annual textbook price survey reveals that prices of more than 95% of commonly used textbooks have increased by an overall average of 3.2% for the next school year, which is 1.4 percentage point higher than the inflation rate (1.8%) of the same period, the largest difference since 2008.

The Council's survey covered 542 commonly used textbooks, with 94 for primary schools and 448 for secondary schools from 20 publishers.   Among these textbooks, only 11 (2%) have their prices frozen, while prices of the remaining 531 (98%) increased by an average of 0.7% to 5.8%.  This marks the fifth consecutive year that no price reduction for textbooks is recorded.

The average increase (3.3%) of secondary school textbooks this year was up 0.4 percentage point compared to last year's 2.9%.  The average increase of primary school textbooks rose 0.1 percentage point to 3.0% from last year's 2.9%.  It is also noteworthy that among the top 10% of textbooks on sale, considered in terms of increased prices, prices rose substantially from 4.4% to 5.8%.  All of them are secondary school textbooks, mostly for Visual Arts, Language and Biology.

When considered by subjects for primary schools, Religious Education was the only textbook category showing average price increases (1.3%) lower than the rate of inflation.  Prices of textbooks for other subjects saw average price increases ranging between 2.7% and 3.4%, with Music textbooks took the biggest jump.  As for secondary school textbooks, only Tourism and Hospitality Studies textbooks found no increase in price.  All other subjects have increased on average 1.9% to 5.2% with Visual Arts textbooks showing the greatest increase.

The Education Bureau has fully implemented a "Policy of Debundling Textbooks and Teaching/Learning Materials for Pricing" since 2014.  This policy prohibited publishers from bundling the cost of textbooks with teaching and study materials to enable students and teachers to buy textbooks and teaching materials according to their needs, at set prices.  All textbooks sampled in this survey were unbundled from teaching and learning materials.

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