Business council urges private publishers to produce school materials

Iceland should give private publishers a bigger role in producing primary-school teaching materials, according to a new analysis from Viðskiptaráð, a business council, reported by mbl.is. The council says the current system does not adequately meet the needs of pupils and teachers.

In the 2025 PISA survey, 25 per cent of school leaders said shortages of teaching materials hindered instruction to some extent, up from 17 per cent in 2022, said Birta Karen Tryggvadóttir, an economist at Viðskiptaráð. Seven in 10 teachers also say they often or very often use material created within their own schools.

Tryggvadóttir said it was not an efficient solution for teachers across the country to create teaching materials from scratch because available resources were not good enough.

The Centre for Education and School Services, known as MMS and formerly the Directorate of Education, currently produces and distributes materials to schools. Schools can also apply to the Teaching Materials Fund for money to buy resources from other sources, while the Teaching Materials Development Fund awards grants to produce new material.

According to the analysis, MMS receives most public spending on teaching materials, averaging ISK 9,800 per primary-school pupil. The Teaching Materials Fund receives about ISK 1,800 per pupil.

That leaves private publishers with a very limited market, Tryggvadóttir said, noting that they must compete with materials schools receive free from MMS. She said other Nordic countries had made greater use of private publishers, with the public sector funding purchases rather than producing the materials itself.

Viðskiptaráð wants schools to have more choice over the materials they use and proposes that MMS stop publishing them. Instead, it says, the centre should check that available resources meet the requirements of the national curriculum.

Tryggvadóttir said better and more varied teaching materials could be developed if publishers were allowed to compete. High-quality resources, she said, are essential to teaching and school operations, and important for pupils’ performance and teachers’ work in the classroom.