Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed 40 million RUR to buy school textbooks this year.

The regional Education and Science Ministry is already collecting applications from the local schools to find out what program each of the schools employs and where the book shortage is the greatest. Elementary school books are given a natural priority; so are the textbooks needed for the children from lower-income families or families with many children.

According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the books will be bought immediately from the publishers with a 20% discount, which means many more books can be obtained. Thus the region was able to get 285,884 textbooks with the 40 million RUR available. These include 211 Promising School sets of textbooks for elementary school students, published by Prosvescheniye. The local teachers say these are the second-generation experimental textbooks that Chelyabinsk Region has been testing for two years now.

All the new books will have reached the region’s 3,000 schools by September 1, 2009.