Limits on spending for school textbooks should be made more stringent by eliminating “recommended” books from the list of texts to be used or by explicitly bringing them too under the maximum spending limits.

This is the call made by the Italian Competition Authority in a report sent to the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research, and to the Prime Minister.

The report was written following a series of checks on the price of school textbooks carried out by the Authority in the month of August 2008 with the assistance of the Special Units of the Guardia di Finanza in order to check on the effects of the investigation into the AIE (Associazione Italiana Editori, or Association of Italian Publishers) and the main publishers of school texts which was terminated in April 2008 with the acceptance of a number of commitments made by the parties under investigation.

After processing a mass of data, the Authority found that cover-prices for school textbooks had basically risen in line with inflation. In parallel, however, it was found that there was a large overrun compared with the spending limits set by the Ministry when, in addition to prescribed texts, “recommended” books were also included.

This gave rise to the Antitrust Authority’s suggestion. In some cases the textbooks recommended represent a resource the teacher clearly intends to use and without which students cannot easily follow the lessons: it would be more consistent to include these on the list of books “to be purchased” or at least count them when checking that spending limits are being complied with. For other volumes (such as dictionaries or reference texts) students should be free to use books that their families may already have at home or to buy the cheapest text available.

In its report, the Antitrust Authority also points out the need for specific steps by the Education Ministry to promote the systematic use by teachers of the computerized lists of the AIE (Associazione Italiana Editori, or Association of Italian Publishers): when teachers are able to identify the texts that are on the market for each subject and the relevant prices, they can make choices that take account of the whole range of options available.

In the Authority’s view, stringent application of the spending limits using the above criteria together with widespread use of the AIE data base could bring greater competitive pressure to bear on the publishers and promote the effective implementation of the new school textbook system introduced to the market following the Authority’s investigation, with positive effects in terms of reduced prices and better quality.

Rome, 9 January 2009