Parents call on schools to recycle old books.
"Every year, I spend nearly Dh4,000 on books for my two children who are now in Grade 9 and 7. Some of the text books are thick and heavy. Apart from the fact that my children carry a huge load of books on their back, my concern is also that half of these books are untouched with no pencil or pen markings - as if they have never been browsed through during the year," said a parent Samantha C.
"When I asked my kids if they had been taught these pages (looking as clear as new), they said they usually worked on work-books rather than text books! If that is the case, the school should reduce the number of books they sell or simply change the syllabus to reduce the pages in a book," she said in dismay.
Samantha said she was concerned by the amount of books that parents dump due to the fact that some schools in the UAE do not encourage their students to re-use old school books.
For Bhavna Goel, an Indian parent whose children go to an international curriculum school in New Dubai area it's a different story altogether. "We never pay separately for school books. Text and copy books are provided by the school to the children. At the end of the year, the children have to return the text books to the school. If a text book goes missing, we pay a fine for it."
She said she was happy with the initiative taken by the school to re-use old books. "There is practically no wastage of books here. More and more schools should adopt methods to avoid excessive wastage of books."
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