Distribution of teaching and learning materials

Access to appropriate learning materials is one of the strategies to achieve Target 4a on a safe, inclusive, and effective learning environment under SDG 4 (UNESCO, 2015a). There is now considerable evidence of the importance of textbooks and other teaching and learning materials (TLMs) for the quality of learning. They can be a particularly cost-effective strategy in low-income countries where they can compensate for teachers’ lack of training, large class sizes, parents’ illiteracy, and lack of reading materials at home (Read, 2016). While efforts have been made in developing countries, both by governments and development partners, to establish an effective textbook and TLMs supply system, few of these countries are able to provide these materials on a regular, reliable, and predictable basis and “in sufficient quantities to meet curriculum requirements”  (Read, 2011: 2; UNESCO, 2015b). Non- or late provision of TLMs leads to parents covering most related expenses, exacerbating inequalities and penalizing disadvantaged families (GEM Report, 2016).

Distribution, which is “the stage in the book chain when printed and published books are delivered to targeted teachers and students” (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014: 106–107), is one of the most significant challenges to national provision, resulting in damage, loss, late delivery, and non-use of the materials (Read, 2011). Studies in sub-Saharan Africa reported annual losses of between 25 to 65 percent of the stock during distribution (Read, 2015). However, distribution is also one of the most neglected aspects of the textbook and TLM chain.

While the availability of TLMs is critical to learning quality, their diversity and the lack of evidence on the cost-effectiveness and educational value of each type of TLMs make this topic difficult to address comprehensively (Smart and Jagannathan, 2018). Therefore, this article will mainly focus on textbooks, assuming that policy options for textbook distribution will also apply to many other types of TLM.

Promising policy options

Planning distribution

Although it is a major bottleneck that can result in the loss of investment in textbook programs in many countries, distribution is often an overlooked component of textbook policies (Pearce, 1982). A comprehensive textbook policy should address all the elements of the chain and be underpinned by adequate planning of distribution operations. Distribution planning will need to start with identifying actors involved and their roles and responsibilities along the process, as well as focal points at the central and decentralized levels to verify deliveries and payments (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). Secondly, all potential costs (e.g., storage, transport) must be taken into account; otherwise, planning will be based on unrealistic assumptions about financing and cost recovery and likely result in expensive distribution (Askerud, 1997). Technical considerations are also critical to the success of the distribution planning. These include the expected lifetime of the materials, school mapping and geographical information (e.g., urban/rural areas), weather conditions, packaging, warehousing, transportation and freight, and tracking and payment systems (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). Each of these factors can affect the rest of the chain and, thus, impact deliveries and cause wastage. For instance, cases were reported where some schools could not be supplied due to poor road infrastructure or where textbooks were destroyed because they were transported in open trucks in the rain (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014).

By following these steps, educational planners should gain a clear understanding of the specificities of each region, district, or school and work towards designing an appropriate approach with the help of specialists in the analysis, system design, training, supervision, and initial implementation stages (Read, 2015: 170).

Determining a distribution approach appropriate to the national context

There are two main methods used for textbook distribution: centralized and decentralized. Each presents benefits and limits. A comparison between the two is complicated by the lack of reliable data on textbook availability and use in schools and the mixed results from country experiences for both methods (GEM Report, 2016). Regardless, the strategy to adopt should be tailored to the national context and is contingent upon fulfilling certain conditions.

In a centralized system, the government, mostly through the ministry of education (MoE), decides on the titles and quantities of textbooks and places orders to a publisher, distributor, or bookseller. Textbooks are usually delivered to a central warehouse and then distributed to districts and schools; the MoE head office makes the payment. A centralized approach has often been the choice of governments concerned with the accumulated costs incurred by additional layers along the distribution process (e.g., booksellers) (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). This has been successfully implemented in countries like Viet Nam where the authority of the Ministry of Education over the whole process helped drive textbook unit cost down, and to a lesser extent in small countries with relatively good road infrastructure like Burundi or Djibouti (GEM Report, 2016; Read, 2015). However, state-organized distribution is often associated with late delivery (with no consequences for non-delivery), leakages, high bureaucracy, poor monitoring, corruption, and masked costs (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). Governments opting for a centralized distribution should be equipped with professionally trained experts in logistics, adequate human, material, and financial resources, as well as adequate basic infrastructure and control systems to ensure monitoring (Read, 2015).

In recent years, more and more sub-Saharan developing countries have turned to a decentralized system, which is generally considered more cost-effective. Schools can select titles from a government-approved list and place orders to suppliers from the private sector that they pay themselves through grants (GEM Report, 2016). Distributors and sometimes booksellers are the intermediaries between the publisher and the schools.

There are several benefits to this approach. Firstly, it may better reflect the school’s needs and thus, ensure more efficient use and ownership over the materials (IIEP-UNESCO, n.d.). Secondly, since the private sector is profit-oriented and specialized, delivery timeliness and monitoring are essential, especially if tied to payment, and capacity is less likely an issue. Although costs may be higher (depending on the final distribution point), they are all taken into account (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). Decentralizing distribution channels can also encourage the creation of libraries and rural bookshops and thus benefit a wider readership (Diallo, 2011). Hence, although often excluded from textbook provision programs, booksellers play an essential role in the chain by bringing books closer to the schools and providing publishers feedback for quality improvement (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014).

On the downside, as the combinations for textbooks ordered may vary from school to school, this system may turn out to be less cost-effective and less practical, and schools often do not have the capacity to effectively forecast their demand for TLMs (GEM Report, 2016). Moreover, it works best where there is a well-functioning infrastructure and a thriving publishing industry (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). The features of an effective partnership with the private sector for TLM provision are affordability, sustainability, predictability and good supervision (Read, 2011: 10).

Ensuring that logistics requirements are met

Inadequate storage and transport often lead to damage, leakage, and theft, and therefore, wastage and unnecessary costs. Damage and losses of textbooks imply that children have fewer textbooks to use, and these will need to be replaced more often, resulting in a high distribution frequency (GEM Report, 2016).

Safe storage means that weatherproofing and security requirements are met, which helps hedge against the risks mentioned above. Establishing a warehouse requires regular replacement and maintenance that state-organized distribution systems in developing countries, especially at district and sub-district levels, often fail to ensure due to insufficient or irregular funding (Askerud, 1997; Read, 2011).

The transport to the schools may also be affected by lack of funding, poor terrain, and road infrastructure. This is particularly acute at the final stage of the delivery chain as districts often lack transport means, management, systems, and staff motivation to deliver textbooks to schools and students (Read, 2015; Smart and Jagannathan, 2018). Even when they reach schools, textbooks may not be distributed to students because teachers fear they will not take sufficient care, be absent or drop out, or headteachers have uncertainties about future supplies (UNESCO, 2015b; World Bank, 2018).

Adequate storage and transport at each point of the chain, including in the schools, are fundamental. This implies providing sufficient funding, capacity, and trained staff and building stock control systems to determine annual loss and damage rates (Read, 2015). In the case when the state cannot provide satisfactory conditions for storage and transport, it should resort to commercial operators that are likely to offer a better storage service and “tender school-level distribution to haulage companies” that will be incentivized by payment upon delivery (Read, 2011, 2015).

Financing distribution and accounting for costs

Governments should ensure adequate, predictable, and regular funding for TLM (Read, 2015). An annual budget for distribution should be set, regardless of whether the state or private subcontractors handle it (Askerud, 1997). According to a World Bank study, 3-5 percent of the primary education budget and 4-6 percent of the secondary education budget are minimum spending levels on textbooks (GEM Report, 2016). The timely disbursement of funds is also particularly critical in decentralized ordering systems. The late release of funding to schools can have a domino effect on the actors along the chain: schools cannot pay booksellers, who become indebted to publishers, who, in turn, may accumulate debts to the printer (Chonjo, 1994; Read, 2011).

Several factors have an impact on the costs of distribution. Policy choices are the first factor. Decisions such as the number of compulsory titles, the centralized/decentralized approach, the number of intermediaries involved, or the frequency of distribution influence costs and must be made in light of the cost-effectiveness of each option. Costs can also vary greatly according to the geographical area (urban/rural), the number of languages of instruction, and the complexity and difficulty of distribution networks (Read, 2015). Despite potentially high variations, costs may remain masked in a centralized system since governments use their own resources to undertake distribution (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014).

Some cost-reducing strategies can be considered. The first critical one is to provide adequate storage and transport to limit damage and loss. Another is to decrease the distribution frequency by reusing textbooks. This requires extending textbook life by improving their physical production quality (Askerud, 1997; GEM Report, 2016). According to a Global Education Monitoring policy paper, “increasing durability from 1 to 3 years can reduce the annual per pupil cost of textbooks by more than two-thirds of the unit cost” (GEM Report, 2016: 6). Reusing textbooks from one year to another however implies a culture of care. Keeping and using them only at school could be an option to avoid damage when taken home, provided that schools have adequate storage facilities, a TLM management and record-keeping system, and regular inspections and supervision (Askerud, 1997; Smart and Jagannathan, 2018).

Setting up information systems

In many developing countries, it is difficult to get a sense of the waste caused by poor distribution systems because few of them have effective information systems. Such systems must provide accurate and up-to-date information on at least schools (comprehensive list with location), grade level enrolments, TLM stocks by grade, and annual loss and damage rate (Read, 2016). There are two main methods to collect these data: (i) headteachers’ self-reporting in every school or a representative sample reflecting the distribution of schools across urban/rural areas; or (ii) surveys conducted by interviewers in every school (Read, 2016).

Despite being an expensive endeavor, setting up computerized information systems has been key to the success of the most effective textbook distribution systems in developing countries. With the TLM management information system, schools in Rwanda can place orders and view their inventories, publishers and distributors can download orders and get details about deliveries and payments, and the MoE can monitor the whole cycle (Read, 2016). Since its introduction, 98.3 percent of schools, including remote ones, have seen TLMs directly delivered by the publisher at no cost, and the MoE has access to accurate information on the progress made to meet the pupil-book target ratios (GEM Report, 2016).

In order to improve or maintain the distribution system’s performance, surveys should be administered regularly to verify the effectiveness and equity of distribution and storage (Read, 2011).

Ensuring control and monitoring

MoEs should adopt a holistic control and monitoring approach to limit leakages. Measures include the recruitment of qualified personnel with a good understanding of publishing and distribution to guarantee quality and efficiency; strong institutions and regulation that provide for sanctions for non-compliance; coded packaging to differentiate destinations; community involvement; and flooding the market to counter book scarcity conducive to fraudulent behavior and theft (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014).

Civil society has a particularly important role to play in distribution monitoring. Textbook Count in the Philippines is an example of a successful initiative. A coalition of civil society organizations was involved in all stages of the textbook delivery program, from the national to the school level. On the ground, volunteers counting textbooks managed to cover 80 percent of delivery points across the country, and private contractors and Department of Education officials were delivered receipts upon successful inspection (Arugay, 2012). This contributed to reducing the textbook unit price by roughly 62.5 percent and shortened the average textbook procurement cycle from 24 to 12 months (G-Watch, 2016).

Other policy options

Alternative distribution methods

Alternative distribution methods could be applied to counter distribution network difficulties. These include “using the existing wholesale and retail book trade if it has the necessary capacity, national coverage, finance, and professionalism,” like in Kenya (Read, 2015: 171). Another option would consist of publishers integrating the cost of distribution in their prices and delivering directly to schools (e.g., Rwanda) (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014; Read, 2015). Some countries have also implemented a hybrid, i.e., semi-decentralized, distribution, whereby the publisher delivers textbooks to provincial or regional warehouses before being collected to the schools by groups such as parent-teacher associations. This option can apply when the bookselling infrastructure is weak but setting up and running regional warehouses come with high costs, in addition to technical and human resources (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014).

More creative solutions have also been explored, especially in the case of difficult-to-reach schools. One was to negotiate with private companies that distribute other goods but have a good national or regional network (e.g., Coca-Cola, Guinness) as in the Philippines. It must be kept in mind that TLMs may not be the priority for these companies since it is not their core business (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). Relatedly, civil society organizations like UNICEF have been engaged in textbook distribution in difficult humanitarian areas where they were already present. At the final stage of the distribution chain, parent-teacher associations can also be involved in transporting TLMs from the regional or district level to the schools (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). It is important to emphasize that these are short-term solutions that cannot substitute for a longer-term commitment to developing a solid nationwide distribution network.

Digital TLMs

Digital TLMs present two main benefits over printed materials: they allow to reduce the cost of books and circumvent the recurrent issues related to distribution, and they give access to a variety of useful educational content (Crabbe and Nyingi, 2014). However, it is an option that may not be affordable to many schools in developing countries due to the high costs involved (hardware, teacher training, maintenance, internet connectivity, and electricity, among others). Inequities in access to such resources may further existing disparities (e.g., rural vs. urban area) (Read, 2011). In addition, replacing textbooks with digital materials implies a major upheaval that should be supported by high-quality and tailored content, notably in local languages of instruction where applicable (Read, 2011; Smart and Jagannathan, 2018).