All textbooks meant for distribution to public elementary and high school students next school year in English, Social Studies, Sibika and Hekasi have failed the evaluation of the Department of Education (DepEd).
All 130 of the textbooks and teacher’s manuals need either minor or major revisions and cannot be distributed unless the revisions are made, the DepEd said yesterday.
Even after the revisions are made by the publishers, editors and writers of the textbooks and teacher’s manuals, these must undergo public bidding before the DepEd may purchase and distribute them in time for the opening of next school year.
This was revealed during a meeting of DepEd officials led by Education Undersecretary for Finance and Administration Juan Miguel Luz and about 50 textbook publishers and representatives of the textbook industry at the DepEd’s Bulwagan ng Karunungan in the DepEd complex, Meralco Avenue, Pasig City.
During the meeting, Luz told the publishers that if they want to sell their textbooks to the public schools, the materials must meet or exceed DepEd criteria.
"If you want to sell to the public schools, you have to follow (our criteria)," Luz stressed. "Otherwise, sell to the private schools," he warned the textbook publishers and industry representatives.
Luz warned the textbook industry representatives that the private school market is getting smaller, as more and more private school students are transferring to public schools every year.
He also told textbook publishers their products in the market right now need many revisions and must be pulled out and replaced with better-quality textbooks.
"What’s out on the market is garbage," Luz said.
According to their content evaluation, the DepEd said 130 textbooks and teacher’s manuals for English, Social Studies, Sibika and Hekasi were evaluated recently.
These textbooks underwent four levels of evaluation from 477 evaluators from the private and public sectors — 115 evaluators for level 1, 151 for level 2, 139 for level 3, and 72 for level 4.
In their evaluation for the first level textbooks, the DepEd said the elementary and high school English textbooks and teacher’s manuals evaluated failed to include or sufficiently develop the learning competency levels set by DepEd.
Moreover, all nine grade four to grade six textbooks and teacher’s manuals evaluated require major revisions.
The evaluated Sibika and Hekasi textbooks and teacher’s manuals were also found not to sufficiently develop or include all the DepEd’s expected learning competencies.
Of the evaluated Sibika textbooks for students in the first to third grades, only five sets of textbooks and teacher’s manuals of 33 sets required minor revisions. These textbooks and teacher’s manuals need the most number of major revisions, DepEd said in its evaluation report presented to the publishers.
At the second level of evaluation, the DepEd said all 18 elementary English textbooks and teacher’s manuals evaluated required major revisions. A majority of the deficiencies found in these books covered grammar (83 percent) and developmental concepts (16 percent).
Fifteen of these 18 elementary English textbooks contained over 50 grammatical errors.
A total of 22 out of the 24 sets of high school English textbooks and teacher’s manuals required major revisions. A majority of the deficiencies found in the textbooks cover grammar (54 percent) and development of concepts (25 percent).
At least 50 percent of 13 high school textbooks contain grammatical errors while six sets contain conceptual errors.
All 33 elementary Sibika textbooks and teacher’s manuals evaluated require major revisions. A majority of the deficiencies were found in content (36 percent), grammar (27 percent) and graphics (33 percent).
All 27 elementary Hekasi textbooks and teachers manuals evaluated require major revisions. The majority of deficiencies were errors in fact (44 percent) followed by erroneous visuals (33 percent).
Twenty-six of 28 Araling Panlipunan textbooks and teacher’s manuals evaluated require major revisions. The majority of these high school textbooks and teacher’s manuals lacked developmental concepts (31 percent), contained factual errors (27 percent) and had grammatical errors (23 percent).
At evaluation level three, the report said there was a consistent pattern of weakness in book layout and presentation in the elementary and high school textbooks and teacher’s manuals for English.
For elementary English, only four sets of the evaluated textbooks and teacher’s manuals of nine sets required minor revisions — the rest needed major revisions.
The DepEd findings also show that these elementary textbooks are substandard because of the poor quality of their instructional design and organization.
Textbooks for English from the first to the third grade require the most number of major revisions.
Both elementary and high school textbooks evaluated were criticized for their poor layout and presentation.
Sibika requires the most number of major revisions, while 12 of 27 sets of Hekasi textbooks and teacher’s manuals require minor revisions. Eleven of 28 sets of Araling Panlipunan textbooks and teacher’s manuals also require minor revisions.
At evaluation level four, 17 out of 18 elementary English textbooks and teacher’s manuals require major revisions. Twenty of 24 high school English textbooks and teacher’s manuals require major revisions.
Most of the elementary textbooks and teacher’s manuals lack coherence and clarity of thought and are inconsistent in style.
Most high school textbooks lack coherence and clarity of thought and contain many grammatical errors. — Sandy Araneta