The media office in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education issued the following statement: “At the beginning of the new academic year, the Complaints Office in the Ministry of Education and Higher Education receives complaints, reviews, and inquiries from citizens related to textbooks approved by private schools, and citizens call on the Ministry of Education to intervene to reduce their prices. In light of these questions, the Media Office is interested in clarifying that textbooks produced by private publishing houses in Lebanon and approved by many private schools are priced by the Ministry of Economy and Trade in coordination with the School Publishers Syndicate, and therefore there are no legal powers for the Ministry of Education in the pricing process. In previous times, the Ministry worked as an informal mediator between the Ministry of Economy and the Publishers Syndicate, seeking to make prices as acceptable as possible, and to provide educational services of interest to citizens. As for reviewing the contents of textbooks produced by private publishing houses in Lebanon, the authority to do so rests with the Educational Center for Research and Development, which reviews the draft manuscript in order to ensure its conformity with the approved educational curricula, and also ensures that it does not incite sectarian strife, and that it does not harm relations between Lebanon and brotherly and friendly countries. As for reviews of textbooks produced by international publishing houses and imported from abroad for the benefit of certain schools that adopt foreign curricula or benefit from scientific books approved outside Lebanon, the prices of these books are often exorbitant, and their pricing is subject to the will of the exporter and the costs of shipping, customs, transportation, and library profits, and the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Economy has no authority to price them. Also, the contents of the aforementioned imported books are not subject to Lebanese conditions, as they are mainly produced for countries and societies outside Lebanon, and reviewing their contents and allowing their entry into Lebanon falls within the powers of the General Directorate of Public Security, which includes a device that reads books, magazines, and publications that enter Lebanon and gives permission to import and approve them. As for the national textbook series produced by the Educational Center for Research and Development, they are accredited in public schools, and in many private schools that wish to do so, in whole or in part. Therefore, the pricing of the national textbook is done by the Educational Center, which has the exclusive right to do so, without any interference from the Ministry of Economy or any other party. These books are very low-priced and do not seek profit. It should be noted that the Lebanese Constitution, after the Taif Agreement, assigned the Educational Center exclusively the tasks of writing and printing the Unified History Book and the Unified National Education and Civic Upbringing Book as well, and no private publishing house was allowed to produce either of them. The national education and civic upbringing book was produced and provided to all public and private schools, but the unified history book was not agreed upon at the time, and the unified history book will be produced and written with the issuance of educational curricula developed with a new approach that includes various narratives of the events of Lebanese history.