Digital textbooks will be introduced in the education system in stages over a course of five years, starting with the fourth grade in the 2021/2022 school year, Education Minister Mila Carovska said on Thursday, reiterating that current textbooks aren’t in line with new curriculum and don’t meet students’ needs.

However, students and teachers do not accept replacing printed textbooks with digital ones. Teachers are reluctant to accept the reforms and fear that this way children are captured, who already spend too much time in front of computers.

The students, on the other hand, are announcing a protest if Minister Carovska doesn’t abandon the idea of digital textbooks.

They add that the latest reform of textbooks is an extremely bad and discriminatory decision in many respects and that they oppose, as they call it, the destruction of education.