|
By Yvonne Chua and Luz Rimban
Vera Files
Editor’s note: The first part
reported that a new government textbook to be released when schools
open violated the country’s one-China policy. The book refers to
Taiwan as a separate country from the People’s Republic of China.
Last of two parts
The delivery of textbooks from
the Department of Education in Manila to far-flung areas is usually
a boring and mundane obligation.
But come July, select communities
in remote areas will be welcoming the arrival of textbooks with
celebrations resembling town fiestas, complete with dances and décor.
The idea is for the community to
fetch the books from district offices, and once the books reach the
local public schools, roll out the red carpet for these
instructional materials so crucial to children’s education.
This practice has been christened
“Textbook Walk,” a brainchild of G-Watch that was successfully
piloted in four divisions of the Education department last year.
G-Watch, which is run by the Ateneo School of Government, leads a
consortium of 39 civil social organizations that monitors the
government’s textbook distribution through the Textbook Count
project.
The Education department is
adopting “Textbook Walk” this school year to help ensure that
more schools get their textbooks on time. It is designing the scheme
after “Brigada Eskwela” wherein communities help refurbish and
get schools ready for the school opening by contributing cash, kind
or labor. Last year, 26,000 schools signed up for Brigada Eskwela
and received P2-billion worth of materials and man-hours.
In last year’s Textbook Walk,
parents, teachers, students, barangay (village) officials, vendors
and residents in Bayawan City, Siargao and several towns in Negros
Oriental and Davao Oriental volunteered to fetch the books and
teacher’s manuals at a dozen Education department district offices
and bring them to the schools. Volunteers also came from
organizations such as the boy and girl scouts.
The books were transported in
trucks, vans, motorcycles, tricyles, pedicabs, pumpboats, wooden
carts or on foot.
In many towns, residents formed
human chains or held parades that culminated in songs and dances,
and even a blessing from the priest, when the books finally reached
their destinations. In Dauin in Negros Oriental, Textbook Walk
coincided with the town fiesta.
In all, Textbook Walk delivered
60,000 textbooks worth P2.5 million to more than 110 elementary
schools.
Fast delivery
Redempto Parafina of the Ateneo
School of Government said Textbook Walk hopes to reduce delays in
the delivery of textbooks to elementary schools, especially those in
the remote areas.
He said the project also focuses
on the importance of community participation in the distribution of
textbooks.
“By organizing a festive event
that facilitates the delivery of textbooks from the districts to
elementary schools, the citizens’ demand for good governance is
dramatized,” Parafina said.
Education department suppliers
deliver textbooks directly to the country’s 6,439 public high
schools.
At the elementary level, however,
suppliers drop off the books only at the department’s 2,359
district offices, not at the 37,642 public schools. The school
principals are the ones who pick up the books allotted to their
pupils.
A total of 23 million textbooks
worth P732 million are being delivered to public elementary schools
this school year. These include 21.28 million English 1 to 6
textbooks and nearly two million copies of HeKaSi 6 (Geography,
History and Civics).
School principals can draw from
the budget—P1.50 per copy— set aside by Education department for
the delivery of textbooks from the districts to their schools.
Budget-caused delays
But deliveries get delayed when
the budget is not immediately transferred to school divisions and,
in turn, to the district offices, said Socorro Pilor, executive
director of department’s Instructional Materials Council
Secretariat.
Parafina said the P1.50 per book
allocation is also insufficient for schools in the remote areas,
forcing principals or teachers to shell out their own money to cover
the costs of picking up the textbooks.
In 2004, Coca-Cola signed an
agreement with the Education department to use its trucks to help
transport textbooks from district offices to the recipient schools.
But Pilor said, the
department’s delivery schedules were at times incompatible with
Coca-Cola’s internal delivery system.
The schools in this year’s
Textbook Walk will be chosen from the 1,898 that performed poorly in
the National Achievement Test, as well as fifth- and sixth-class
municipalities that have difficulty transporting books, she said.
Problems uncovered
Parafina said last year’s
Textbook Walk was also a good mechanism to gather feedback on the
existing textbook situation.
G-Watch, for example, found that
defective textbooks were not being replaced because the principals
and teachers were either unaware that department divisions kept a
buffer stock or feared it would take long to have the defective
books replaced.
Many schools also complained
about the content of the textbooks, it said.
G-Watch also learned that many
schools still had a textbook-to-pupil ratio of 1:3 to 1:5 in certain
subjects where the Education department was claiming a 1:1 ratio.
The Department of Education-IMCS
(Instructional Materials Council Secretariat) said it expects to
attain a 1:1 textbook-to-pupil ratio in the five core subjects
(English, Filipino, Math, Science and Social Studies) at all grade
levels, from elementary to high school, when it completes its
textbook procurement this year.
The Education department is
distributing this month new English textbooks for all levels in
elementary and high school, and new social studies textbooks for
grade 6 and first and second year high school.
It is procuring this year high
school math and science textbooks for all levels and social studies
textbooks for the third and fourth year high school.
The evaluation of science books
for grades 3 to 6 and of math books for all elementary grade levels
is ongoing.
New titles for elementary and
high school Filipino will be evaluated starting August.
The textbooks are procured
through loans from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.
In February, the World Bank
commended the Department of Education for completing the bidding and
awarding of elementary English textbooks worth $25 million in less
than two weeks and for getting the record lowest textbook prices.
The average unit price of a
textbook is P31.56 for elementary and P33.72 for high school.
(VERA Files is the work of
veteran journalists taking a deeper look at current issues. Vera is
Latin for “true.”)
|
