The Minister of Education (ME) has announced that the Mega platform has started to distribute ‘vouchers’ that will allow students to get their textbooks for free in Portugal.

The vouchers will be available three weeks earlier than the previous school year allowing students to get both new and reused materials.

“The first vouchers for the textbooks for the 2nd, 3rd,4th,5th,6th,7th,8th,9th and 11th have already been issued. The remaining years of schooling will available as of August.”

The process of attributing these vouchers starts as soon as schools export student’s data to the Mega electronic platform, schools have until September to upload this information.

These vouchers can only be used in selected bookstores or in schools, this campaign offers both new and reused textbooks.

“The distribution of reused textbooks is done randomly by the Mega platform,” reads the ME statement.

According to the ME statement more than 50% of the books in the platform are second-hand and schools all over the country decided that reused materials were good for the environment.

Looking at the financial side, last year proved that only 4% of the books lent to students were second-hand while all the others were new, this year 150 million euros will be used in the initiative.

The minister of education also announced the launch of an awareness campaign on the weight of backpacks, the initiative aims to raise awareness in families and schools to “reduce the weight of students backpacks.”