Although the new school year in Bosnia starts on September 5, only primary school children in the Sarajevo canton will get free textbooks in time, while the distribution of school books in the other nine cantons of the BiH Federation will be delayed, Bosnian local media reported on Friday, citing experts and publishing companies.

To make matters worse, some of the schoolbooks will be wholly inappropriate and plainly wrong, the president of the Association of Publishing Companies, Ivica Vanja Roric, told media.

As an example, he said that children in the towns of Zenica and Tuzla will be reading in their textbooks that “wolves make nests in the bush and live in the trees” while some other animals “produce stinky gasses”, Roric said.

According to Roric and other experts, this tragicomic situation is a result of the sluggishness of the cantonal governments, which failed to select and sign contracts with publishers, as well as slowness of the federal government which was late in transferring funds for printing to cantonal governments.

Roric also complained against the folly of some cantonal governments, which instead of committees made of experts, teachers and parents, allowed ad-hoc commissions to select publishers. As a result, children will get erroneous and misleading textbooks.

The problems that governments, schools, parents and children are facing, underline the difficult situation in Bosnia’s educational system, which is in dire need of a general overhaul. Over the past few years Bosnia’s politicians have obstructed attempts to rigorously reform of the education system.