The Galician Government has given the green light this Monday to allocate 17 million euros to protect support measures for Galician families for the next academic year 2024-2025, aimed at facilitating the acquisition of textbooks and school supplies.
To this end, in the words of the president, Alfonso Rueda, the Galician Government “maintains the improvements enabled in the last two years” – due to the increase in prices – and which, in practice, translate into an increase in the contribution that students receive. The goal is for 70% of students to have some support from the Xunta to access textbooks or school supplies.
Specifically, the Xunta maintains the two categories of the material bonus created last year, 75 and 60 euros depending on family income, for which a budget of more than 9 million is reserved compared to the 5.5 million of the course prior to the improvements, according to Europa Press.
The same happens with textbooks, with actions that are channeled through two consolidated mechanisms, whose operation the Xunta sees as “satisfactory.” On the one hand, the Solidarity Fund (from 3rd of Primary to 4th of ESO) and, on the other, book aid (for 1st and 2nd of Primary, Special Education or students with special educational needs, whose manuals cannot be reused) .
In the case of aid for textbooks, the budget once again exceeds 6 million, while a new contribution of 1.2 million is injected into the Solidarity Fund, which raises the resources destined to acquire books from the start to 25 million. in force of the new state educational law, which forced all copies to be renewed.
Benefits for 70% of the students
With this step, schools and institutes will have “more than 400,000 books in the solidarity fund to make available to families for free.” On this occasion, it is not necessary to make a large change of books, as was necessary the last two summers due to the implementation of the new content.
In the current academic year, more than 96,500 students had free books and more than 128,000 accessed vouchers for school supplies. This, added to the students who have free access to the digital book, means that more than 70% of Galician students have the support of the regional government in this area, an objective that the Rueda Executive wants to reissue.
