Reporter
carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt
A woman is expected to appear before a magistrate on October 3, after she was arrested for stealing books at a bookstore on Henry Street, Port-of-Spain on July 20.
Guardian Media spoke with the woman under the condition of anonymity, and she admitted that she did not have enough money to fill her son’s book list.
And even though she was caught, based on the comments under the story uploaded to Guardian Media’s special media pages, she is not the only one.
Comments such as, “poverty is hell,” or who feels it knows it” were posted many times under the post.
“Six textbooks are over $ 2000 who’s the real thief here,” another person asked in the comments.
Other commenters offered to help even though they labelled her actions as wrong.
Guardian Media visted several bookstores to find out the average price to fill several bookslists. The average cost to fill a primary school book list for Standards One through Five at Mohammed’s Bookstore Associates Limited and Ishmael M. Khan & Sons Limited in Port-of-Spain is between $600 and $1,000.
Guardian Media also visited second-hand bookstores to enquire about the prices. At GAIO Book Traders in the People’s Mall on Henry Street, filling a Standard One through Five booklist will cost between $300 and $400.
A standard three-book list for Delaford Anglican School costs $647.
This includes the Practical Math Workbook 3 at $150, Process Testing Maths 3 at $45, Instrumental English Language at $120, Essential Comprehension at $100, and Car’Rhy Reader at $120. The novel was priced at $35. In this list, the books cost $570.
However, the cost of books for a Standard One student at Montgomery Government Primary School was $1,039.
For Forms One to Five in secondary school, parents can expect to pay between $1500 and 3000 for new books and the price of second-hand books varies between $600 and $1,500.
According to used-book seller Giselle Oliver, a Form One booklist cost $600 to $1,500, and Form Two averaged between $700 and $1,000.
She said the Form Three list varied between colleges or convents and Government schools, with convents and colleges $1,200 or $1,300 on average and Government schools between $700 and $900.
The Form Four she revealed will cost about $1,000.
A Form Three booklist for a Roxborough Secondary School student came up to $1,609. The most expensive book was the Math 1,2,3 at $250, and the social science workbook was the cheapest on the list at $81.
The required books for a Form One student of Bishop’s High School cost no less than $1,359.
One secondary school teacher, who did not want to be identified, said the prices were exorbitant.
“A set of books on it, and sometimes we doh use all the book, they does just put books, you might just use two of the four,” she explained.
According to the teacher, students not having the books at the start of the new school year would put them at a disadvantage.
She said that term one (September-December) was the longest and set the tone and pace for the rest of the academic year.
“Second term is a lot of break up days you know for Carnival and the third term is to wrap up so it pushes them back,” she said.
The teacher added that all students should have all their books to start the school year but believed that Form Ones should have all that was needed since they were entering a new environment with a new style of teaching and academics.
“You want the child to start off in the right way, on the right foot, you don’t want the child to be traumatised. You know what is to be lost in the beginning it hard for you to pick up you know,” she said.
Meanwhile, a retired primary school teacher with 27 years of experience, who also did not want to be named, said the books were important for the children to follow along.
“What we try to do is to see if we could get a used book from a child from a previous class, but sometimes that don’t work because the child would have written in the books already, especially in the lower classes, “ she explained.
She said they could not photocopy from the books because it was against the law but sometimes they would let those children copy the lesson during their lunch break.
During the 2024 budget, the Minister of Finance introduced a proposition to allocate a school supplies and book grant of $1,000 to support financially disadvantaged students at both primary and secondary school levels.
Parents and guardians earning a salary of $10,000 or less, those who have students with disabilities, and parents of students in receipt of grants from the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services were eligible.
In a press release issued yesterday morning, the Ministry of Education said that from August 5, successful applicants for the Government’s $1,000 book grant would start receiving the money via direct deposit.
The ministry added that those without a bank account would be able to collect their cheques from August 12 at a place that will be disclosed then.
The ministry said all applicants would be notified via a phone call or email.