If you’re the par­ent or guardian of a school­child and you’re strug­gling to find some text­books with just days re­main­ing un­til the start of the 2019/2020 aca­d­e­m­ic year, you’re not alone.

“One of the books, no book­store has it so far, I don’t know why.

“They said they’ll get it (the books) when school starts back, some are sold out and the oth­ers, well they are await­ing the ship­ment.”

These were some of the com­ments made to Guardian Me­dia when we vis­it­ed RIK Book­store in Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day.

But we were told by mem­bers of the Book In­dus­try Or­gan­i­sa­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go (BIOTT), that there are two main rea­sons for the un­avail­abil­i­ty.

One has to do with when the prin­ci­pals send their de­sired book­lists for the up­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic year. For ex­am­ple, one mem­ber of BIOTT told us that the book­lists are sent to book­sellers by late June.

But, some of these books come from Eng­land, via boat, mean­ing it takes some time to get here.

So or­der­ing in late June may be a cou­ple of months lat­er than the ide­al time to put in their re­quests.

We were told that’s why some text­books are on­ly avail­able in Sep­tem­ber when the aca­d­e­m­ic year has al­ready com­menced.

An­oth­er rea­son has to do with the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion’s text­book eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise.

BIOTT Pres­i­dent, Si­mon Cadette told Guardian Me­dia that the ex­er­cise start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2018 and the re­port should have been with enough time for prin­ci­pals to amend their book lists and for im­porters to know what stock to or­der.

“This was done for cer­tain ar­eas, lan­guage arts, read­ing, math and some ar­eas for Sec­ondary School, I think the Gov­ern­ment felt there were cer­tain books that did not mean their stan­dard.”

How­ev­er, Cadette said the dead­line giv­en for pub­lish­ers to sub­mit books at the time was “ridicu­lous.” He re­called that it was ini­tial­ly two weeks and then ex­tend­ed for an­oth­er month.

He said in De­cem­ber the books were even­tu­al­ly sub­mit­ted by the pub­lish­ers.

Cadette said there was an ini­tial re­port that was done and some pub­lish­ers were re­ject­ed while oth­ers were rec­om­mend­ed for amend­ments.

But Cadette said in the ini­tial stages the Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry had agreed that there would be an ap­peal process which would give the pub­lish­er some clar­i­ty on their de­ci­sion.

“That hasn’t been held up by the Min­istry and that’s one of the is­sues we’re deal­ing with right now.”

Cadette said the com­ments that came out of the eval­u­a­tion was very vague thus un­der­scor­ing the im­por­tance of the ap­peal as he be­lieves the process could have been rushed and there could be er­rors.

Cadette added that the Learn­ing Man­age­ment Eval­u­a­tion Com­mit­tee sent cor­re­spon­dence this week dis­cussing the pro­ce­dure and at­tempt­ing to as­sure them that every­thing is above board.

But BIOTT says it will still be seek­ing a meet­ing to ad­dress the ap­peal process.

So how is this af­fect­ing those seek­ing to buy books for this aca­d­e­m­ic year?

“Well the Min­istry would have told prin­ci­pals to es­sen­tial­ly not put any new ti­tles, even though they did not ex­plain what a new ti­tle is, and that may have cre­at­ed con­fu­sion and what could hap­pen is some prin­ci­pals may not have put new books on the list or put books very late af­ter get­ting some clar­i­fi­ca­tion.”

But he said the re­al­i­ty is that the eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise would not be ready for this aca­d­e­m­ic year.

“You would have a sit­u­a­tion where a num­ber of schools, you’d find that books they want­ed to use, they won’t be able to use it un­til 2020/2021 aca­d­e­m­ic year.”

Cadette added that pub­lish­ers may al­so be af­fect­ed be­cause due to this pe­ri­od of lim­bo, they may not pub­lish the amounts that they are ac­cus­tomed to, which could lead to avail­abil­i­ty is­sues.

Guardian Me­dia at­tempt­ed to con­tact Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia about this but was un­able to reach him via tele­phone. Mean­while, at the book store yes­ter­day some par­ents were still com­plain­ing about the high cost for school books.

One par­ent told us it will cost her up­wards of three thou­sand dol­lars to ful­fill the book list.

“God re­al­ly help us.”