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By Nora O. Gamolo
Continued from Sunday
The Department of Education (DepEd)
will pay only for copyright authorization, and winning bidders are
not necessarily the printers for their books. In this case, the
bidder that has been given top ranking will get the contract.
After the assessment, the
evaluators do not even know who submitted the text. Seven people
look at it, and come together for a team evaluation.
Pilor said DepEd is taking
seriously its evaluation exercises. To date, it has demanded
evaluators to undergo examinations to test their knowledge and
skills in terms of subject content and English competency before
they qualify as evaluators. This was not done in the past, she
added.
Whatever the outcome of
evaluations, the materials are returned to the publishers for
improvement.
DepEd has also created an
oversight committee to ensure that the problems of textbook
evaluation are fully addressed and resolved. The committee will be
composed of independent and highly respected educators and book
experts.
“As a result of reforms in the
textbook procurement process, the cost of textbooks has been reduced
by half and is expected to further go down,” Lapus said.
“Moreover, the quality of the paper used in the new textbooks has
significantly improved.”
The DepEd’s Textbook
Procurement Program was recently cited as a best practice by the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development-Development
Assistance Committee, an international forum of donor governments
and international multilateral organizations, including the United
Nations and the World Bank.
The DepEd solicited the
participation of the academe and civil society groups in its
textbook program.
“They are very much involved in
the evaluation, procurement and delivery processes of the
department,” Lapus said. “There are 41 civil society groups
involved in our Textbook Count. The Ateneo G-Watch, Transparency and
Accountability Network and Procurement Watch are among those
actively participating in the bidding process to ensure transparency
and accountability in the procurement process.”
He said he welcomes any
constructive discussion on the textbook issue, and assured that
DepEd has learned from its past lessons,
A publisher interviewed by The
Manila Times said that the process now being instituted is so
stringent and foolproof that the textbooks errors identified by
Antonio Calipjo Go must have come from books that were not submitted
to DepEd evaluation, but were sold directly to schools and buyers.
In this case, marketing
considerations like promotional packages could have been the reason
why some private schools chose them over other books.
Among the perks received by
schools in exchange for awarding an expensive book contract to a
specific publisher or printer were computer sets and other school
equipment, student and teacher seminars and Lakbay-Aral (field
trips).
In extreme cases, expensive
vehicles are even given to schools or administrators by book sales
representatives to facilitate the approval of book sales contracts.
The textbook errors identified by
Antonio Calipjo Go and other critics actually point to another
weakness in the educational system where enforcement of academic
standards has been decentralized and taken away from a central
regulatory authority, according to the publisher.
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