Electronic textbooks should help lower costs
Secretary for Education Michael Suen Ming-yeung is relying on electronic textbooks to reduce costs for parents.
Last year, Suen said the bureau would fix flaws in the market. His warning came after publishers refused to separate the sale of students' textbooks from teaching materials within a year, which officials believed could lower textbook prices.
Publishers were accused of creating unnecessary teaching materials, such as CDs, and giving them to schools for free while factoring the production costs into the prices of textbooks for students' use.
Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong legislator Starry Lee Wai-king said the move is disappointing.
'The e-book market will take time to develop and cannot solve the problem immediately,' she said.
Suen said the first electronic textbooks could go live as early as the beginning of the 2013-14 academic year.
