The role that textbooks play in basic education curriculum differs from country to country. Some acknowledge the positive influence that textbooks can bring to education as an effective guidance for learning and teaching instruction, while some believe that textbooks convey the specific values and ideologies and serve for the political and social control. Due to different rationales of textbooks and education, governments of different countries play various roles in the textbook system of basic education, from highly centralised role, to decentralised but supportive role and to laissez-faire and un-supportive role.

The role of governments in textbook system is interpreted in term of two dimensions: framing and the equity of access. Bernstein (1971, p.51) proposes a concept of ‘frame’ to examine the pedagogical relationship between teachers and students. The ‘frame’ concept is applied in this research to discuss the relationship between the government and schools/textbook users (teachers and students) in the context of textbook policy and the choices available for them. Strong framing means that the government controls textbook compilation, examination and usage, referring to a highly centralised role of government in the textbook system; while weak framing means that schools, teachers, students and non-governmental sectors have more freedom in terms of textbook compilation, examination and usage.

The equity of access to textbooks will be analysed based on three principles: availability, accessibility and horizontality (McCowan, 2016). Availability refers to how many versions of textbooks are available there for teachers and students to get access to. Accessibility is influenced by the costs of textbooks and channels available to access the textbooks. As for costs, some countries offer textbooks for free, some have price control on textbooks, while costs of textbooks in some countries may be too high to be affordable for parents, students and schools. Channels to access the textbooks include library, bookstore, schools, on-line etc. The more channels and lower price, the higher accessibility textbooks would have. Horizontality is ‘the characteristic of even prestige and quality across the system’ (McCowan, 2016).

Through analysing and comparing three types of textbook systems applied respectively in England, Finland, and China, this paper aims to examine the relationship between frame (power relation) and the equity of access and argues that highly centralized role of government in textbook system will strongly strengthen the role of textbooks as medium for political control and weaken their positive impact on education improvement; while laissez-faire and un-supportive role that government plays, although minimises the possibility of textbooks serving for political control, may result in national neglection of advantages of textbooks and national shortage of good quality educational materials. To give full play to textbooks’ (educational materials) advantages, governments are encouraged to be supportive in various aspects of textbook system such as the supplying, funding and quality assurance for the sake of education improvement. Neither being highly centralised nor being unattended to textbook issues contributes to the equity and optimise positive effects of educational materials.

The research data come from published education policy documents of England, Finland and China. Discourse analysis and thematic analysis are applied to analyse textbook policy documents.

Textbook policy in three countries can constitute a continuum from strong framing (China, centralised role with decentralised aspects) to weak framing (Finland, dencentralised but supportive role) and very weak framing (England, laissez-faire and un-supportive role). After discovering the positive achievements and challenges of textbook issues happened in each country, this paper aims to argue that to give full play to textbooks’ advantages, governments are encouraged to be supportive in textbook system for the sake of education improvement. Neither being highly centralised nor being unattended to textbook issues contributes to the equity and optimise positive effects of educational materials.

Bernstein, B. (1971) On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. In M.F. D. Young (ed.) Knowledge and Control: New Directions for the Sociology of Education. London: Collier-Macmillan Publishers. McCowan, T. (2016) Three Dimensions of Equity of Access to Higher Education, Compare, 46(4), 645-665.