Changing textbooks: paper prevails, Qr code grows

With the school year 2025/26 drawing to a close and the final grades just around the corner, it is already time to plan for 2026/27 in schools. And to think, for example, about the adoption of textbooks. The choice this time is even more important, since the new syllabuses for the first classes of primary and secondary schools will make their debut in September. Teachers' boards had to choose the textbooks by 20 May and now (by 7 June) they have to send their decisions online to the Italian Publishers' Association.

Meanwhile, from the Aie itself comes an up-to-date snapshot of a sector that confirms the trends of recent years. And also the knots. The latest figures - which will be presented the day after tomorrow in Rome at the Chamber of Deputies during the initiative "The value of knowledge: The textbook as an essential asset of the country" - immortalise an articulated sector, worth around 773 million and with an increasingly complex digital offer: timelines or interactive conceptual maps, docugalleries, online glossaries, artificial intelligence are just some of the services that students and teachers have in their hands every day. A total of 22,386 paper titles and 5.042 million digital educational contents (including 2.66 million in-depth studies, summaries, schemes, etc.; 2 million tests or verifications and 328 thousand video lessons).

According to the Aie, the paper plus digital ecosystem continues to be considered by the school world as the most functional mode for students. Moreover, it is also the most widespread if we consider that, in 2025/2026, almost all school books adopted, 95.7% to be precise, will be in the so-called B mode, which combines the printed book with the digital format (e-book) enriched with digital educational content offered at no extra cost. This compares with 3% for the e-book alone (mode C) and 1.3% for the simple printed book (mode A). Ten years ago, in 2015/16, mode B was at 70.2% of total adoptions, C at 0.9% and A at 28.9.

The e-book alone, therefore, is still little used in classrooms: in the period 2024/25 (latest available data) just over 7.5 million e-books were activated, i.e. 17.7 per cent of the books adopted.

At the same time, digital educational content is growing and, in line with the increased supply, the use of Qr Codes in textbooks, which allow teachers and pupils to access (alongside the website and publishing platforms) supplementary digital content. In the space of five years, between the school year 2020/2021 and 2024/25, their presence within the texts has grown by 253.7%, from 102,170 to 342,938, while consultations over the same period of time have increased almost fivefold, rising from 5.3 million to 29.6 million (+453.2%).