More textbooks, but problems remain

( Second of a series )

Just as classes were ending last March, the Payatas-A Elementary School in Quezon City found itself being asked to accept a delivery of 750 boxes of textbooks. Marivic Panganiban, a principal in the school that serves the congested squatter community of 75,000 people in Payatas, says the books had been intended for the schoolyear that was then drawing to a close.

Panganiban rejected the books initially, because she had nowhere to store them. But the Department of Education (DepEd) instructed her to accept them, so she did. She converted a toilet into a storeroom and filled every available space on the second floor with as many books as she could. She put the rest in a hall on the ground floor, where they now lie soaked in rainwater.

Most of the books were supposed to be distributed to the districts over which the Payatas school acts as head office. Publishers deliver elementary school books to schools districts that in turn take care of distributing these to an average of eight to nine schools. High school titles are delivered directly to the schools.

Up to now, however, many of the books — including the soaked ones — remain unclaimed because, Panganiban says, "the principals don’t have the money to rent vehicles to claim the books. They would have to wait until June 16 when they raise the money through the sales in their canteen and the school feeding program." She has heard that the DepEd will release a hauling fee of P1 per book, but the principal says she has yet to receive official word of this.

Panganiban has more textbook woes. Despite a textbook inventory showing Quezon City as already experiencing an oversupply of books in the core subjects, Payatas-A Elementary School remains plagued by a shortage of textbooks for its 5,000-plus pupils. It has no books in Filipino for its pupils in fourth grade and no books in English for those in fifth grade.

This is a story that has become all too common for DepEd officials. Even as they promise that this schoolyear, many of the country’s 17.3 million public school children would no longer have to share textbooks in at least three core subjects in the lower grade levels, DepEd officials concede that they still have many obstacles to hurdle before they can give every child a textbook in all the five core subjects: English, Social Studies, Science, Math and Filipino.

Indeed, the DepEd constantly worries over whether or not textbooks — the right quantity, the right quality, the right title — are reaching schools and students. Another constant source of trouble is the phenomenon of the multiple textbook titles for one subject, sometimes as many as 10 to a subject.

Thus, while DepEd statistics show a 1:1 textbook-pupil ratio for Science, Math and Filipino in the lower grade levels, the reality on the ground is far more complicated. Says Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz: "Actually our ratio is meaningless. I don’t put too much trust in the figure. It’s the supply side figure — it’s the total number of books that have been printed and bought by the department divided by the grade-level population."

Luz concedes there are "mind-boggling" problems in the government’s textbook procurement scheme. Other officials, for instance, say that Payatas-A Elementary School’s textbook shortage is due to the misallocation of books among the schools in Quezon City. Unfortunately, it is a situation that is repeated in many other parts of the country.

According to the Commission on Audit (COA), there have also been delayed deliveries by suppliers and defective deliveries-such as double pictures, cut human figures, unreadable text and wrong margin sizes-in at least four regions.

Still, there have been improvements in the country’s textbook procurement system. Infused with generous loans from the World Bank and Asian Development Bank, the DepEd’s centralized procurement is now even being called a success story.

The reforms have resulted in an improved public perception of the DepEd. The Social Weather Stations’ 2002-2003 Surveys of Enterprises show the department scoring a positive 43 in its net sincerity in fighting corruption, up from negative nine in 2000, when it was hounded by a corruption scandal involving textbook purchases.

To be continued