The price of textbooks for a school year has rocketed from less than $100 in 1980 to more than $1,400 now, sparking calls yesterday for more second-hand sales and hi-tech learning aids.
The Consumer Council said kitting out students for their first year of primary school had soared to 13 times what it cost 20 years ago, despite household incomes rising only fourfold in the same period.
Council spokesman Dr Michael Tsui said a growing range of subjects - such as computer studies and Putonghua - had contributed to the extra cost, along with higher prices for individual books because of improved quality and a shrinking market.
'The rate of increase of textbook expenditure has been considerably higher than household expenditure. That means your family is spending more and more on textbooks for your children as time goes by. That's bad,' Dr Tsui said.
A survey of 23 primary and 49 secondary schools found that it cost an average of $1,402 to buy the textbooks needed for a Primary One student, compared to just $99 in 1980. For Form One students beginning high school, the cost rose from $260 to $2,129. During that time, the median household income rose from $3,600 a month in 1982, the earliest figure available, to $17,500 in the second quarter of this year.
Book publishers have come under fire for raising prices to unreasonable levels, but Dr Tsui said they were not entirely to blame.
