Improving the quality of school textbooks is one of the key significant aspects within a comprehensive education reform. To this end, the Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport will carry out the process of grading with an updated concept. As a result, students will receive improved textbooks with newer and richer content. The books will be in line with the "New School Model", which involves developing critical and creative thinking amongst students, adapting to a rapidly changing environment and focusing on literacy and modern challenges.

The main novelty in the process is the intensive collaboration and consulting between the ministry and the involved stakeholders, publishers, from the very initial stage. Subsequently, publishers will be given the opportunity to present a textbook structure and a sample chapter within one month of the release of the listing. Additionally, the publishers will receive the information on how to develop the guidelines, what they should consider and correct down the line.

Compared to the previous years, textbooks for the 7^th grade have been more methodically improved - with updated subject standards, key questions / reasoning, complex assignments emerging as a result. However, after conducting an analysis of the textbooks, it appeared that the teacher's guideline, steal remains of inferior quality, generally appearing as a set of general terms and theories. Thus, it’s been decided to revise the teacher’s guideline this year. Teacher’s guideline will be fully restructured and broken down to specific topics, with specific key questions, activities, complex assignments, resource references and so forth.

In order to improve the quality of the textbooks, the content will be reviewed in two stages - basic assessment and textbook refinement and improvement; the authors and reviewers of the second-hand textbooks will be removed from anonymity and will be subjected to extensive cooperation in order to improve the quality of the books. Technical peer review applies only to those who pass the first stage of content peer review (basic peer review).

Again, in order to improve the overall quality, the demands and requirements for authors have been tightened - the threshold has increased from 79% to 90%. To achieve an even higher standard, the proportion of quality and price has changed - instead of 90/10%, quality will have a 95% share with a respective price of 5%.

Furthermore, the timeframes for textbook creation, review, content refinement and improvement have also been increased:

The 2019 textbooks will address the following guidelines:

• All Grade VIII textbooks (17 subjects in total);

• Some Textbooks for Elementary and VII Grade: Grades VI-VII - Georgian as a Second Language and French; Class VII - Physical Education and Sport, French, Russian.

For detailed information please follow the link: http://mes.gov.ge/s/Go2Gu