DISTRIBUTION of the educational material for the civics programme being reintroduced into schools will begin next week, Education Minister Rev Ronald Thwaites said yesterday.

The minister was responding to a story in the Jamaica Observer yesterday in which a number of school principals said they had not yet received any of the books to deliver the programme, which has the teachings of National Hero Marcus Garvey as one of its features.

The new school year is scheduled to begin on Monday.

“There’s a handbook and a large folder of material to support the handbook that the schools will be getting next week, hopefully in time for instruction to begin,” Thwaites told the Observer.

He said by the second week of school the distribution of books for the civics programme should be well underway.

Earlier this month the state-run Jamaica Information Service reported Thwaites as saying the reintroduction of civics in schools would give students a “new sense of responsibility and understanding of what it means to be a Jamaican”.