Meeting with Commissioner Vassiliou on educational publishing

At the Frankfurt Book Fair, the President of FEP, Piotr Marciszuk, the President of EBF John McNamee and the Vice-president of EWC, Anna Duennebier, met with Commissioner for Education and Culture Androulla Vassiliou, in order to present to her the book sector’s views regarding the recent Commission initiative on opening up education. The initiative, which aims at increasing the use of ICT and of OER (Open Educational Resources) in schools, raised several concerns among educational publishers, since it seems to overlook the value that publishers bring to the educational system in producing quality material; it also advances very questionable ideas such as making digital version of schoolbooks available for free after an embargo period. The delegation – accompanied by the Directors of the three associations and by Andreas Baer, head of the German educational publishers group – highlighted the most potentially problematic parts of the initiative and the essential role of publishers in the European school system.