By Lakshmi Kothaneth — MUSCAT: April 30 - At a workshop conducted by Ministry of Education on educational resources for private schools to introduce principals, teachers and parents for the academic year 2017-2018, the major focus was on danger of piracy and counterfeit education resources. One of the steps taken is the launch of the United Global Education Resources (UGER) by House of Hadash that would be an attached consultancy to the Ministry of Education as well as communicate with other publishers.
In addition, they will provide market analysis to publishers as well as provide and maintain a stock before the end of June every year to help speed up the delivery to schools, facilitate schools and provide samples within five working days. The UGER team is trained by all the publishers.
“UGER will also be working with the Ministry of Education to fight against piracy,” said Siham al Riyamiyah, Director of Curricula and Programs of Private Schools, adding, “They will spread awareness on piracy in the community by building a culture of fighting against piracy as well as be partners to international publishers by protecting their products.”
The ministry has been concerned with piracy that has been affecting the quality of books.
Ola Khdeir, Vice-Chairperson of American Anti-Piracy Alliance, said, “When it comes to books and copyrights, there are many hassles we face all over the world. Book piracy is a theft and is unethical.
It affects investors and publishers.
Most importantly, it affects the future intellect as creativity is
killed.
Pirated copies are of bad quality and sold in high prices, sometimes four times higher than the original price. Many of these books might have uncensored information and are not cleared by the authority such as the Ministry of Education.
Piracy could lead to monopoly because original publishers want to compete with professionals.”
American Anti-Piracy Alliance will be working with the government to take action against pirated textbooks in private schools.
While the teachers, parents and principals were given guidelines on the new curriculum, the stress was on buying original copies of text books.
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