The minority bloc in the House of Representatives on Wednesday called for a congressional inquiry into alleged anomalies at the Department of Education after a 2018 Commission on Audit report revealed that more than three million books amounting to P113 million were left unused in the DepEd’s warehouses and around P254 million worth of Grade 3 learning materials were filled with errors.
At a news conference, House Minority Leader Bienvenido Abante Jr. said that the bloc will support a resolution to be filed by Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT-Teachers) Rep. France Castro calling for an investigation into the COA findings.
“If the COA findings are accurate, then I believe everyone can agree that this kind of waste is simply unacceptable, especially for an agency that has to maximize its resources,” said Abante.
“The DepEd gets just over half a trillion pesos for the close to 22.8 million students enrolled in our public school system. It is their responsibility to ensure that every peso we invest in our children’s future is a peso well spent,” he added.
Abante said the minority bloc is concerned about the recurring problems involved in the procurement of learning materials for public school students.
“This is not the first time that this has happened. Issues about the quality of the textbooks used in our public schools have been raised before, and we are concerned that those in DepEd involved in procuring these materials have not been able to address these issues,” Abante said.
He added that his bloc would like to find out the manner in which the learning materials were procured to identify the “problematic areas” that need to be addressed.
“We need to find out if this problem is a result of a flawed procurement system or the product of poor or maybe even corrupt management. This will allow us to propose remedies that will prevent these situations in the future,” Abante said.
As this developed, the DepEd said it is now in the process of changing its policy on the buffer stock of learning materials in its central office warehouses.
Earlier, the COA reported that the DepEd was able to deliver only 11.8 million out of the 38.5 million textbooks and instructional and learning materials, which were supposed to be distributed to public school students and teachers.
“This small portion is allotted in times of calamities, as replacement of old or worn-out books, and for newly established schools and increased enrolment, among others,” the DepEd said in a statement.
The DepEd said the buffer stock pertains to 7 percent of the completed development, printing, and delivery of learning materials for the projected enrolment of the school year.
It said that a “large chunk” of the procured textbooks are delivered to their warehouses while part of it is to be delivered directly to the school districts.
Following COA’s recommendation, the DepEd said it would now maintain only 0.05 percent, not 2 percent, of the 7-percent buffer stock of learning materials in their warehouses.
It would also distribute the remaining 6.95 percent learning materials to all public schools.
On the correction of the errors in textbooks, the DepEd reported that
the Bureau of Learning Resources has conducted three workshops involving academicians and DepEd validators to check comments and recommendations on learning resources and textbooks for Kindergarten to Grade 10 from certain regions.
“Validated findings, description of errors found, and recommendations on how to correct these will comprise the “notes of teachers” that the Department shall issue through a memorandum to the regions,” it said.
The DepEd added it would seek to expand its authority in view of Republic Act 8047, which mandates the writing and printing of textbooks with private publishers.
It also mandates DepEd to prepare the minimum learning competencies, and/or prototypes and other specifications for books and/or manuscripts called for; test, evaluate, select, and approve the manuscripts or books to be submitted by the publishers for multiple adoption.
“Even as the Department recognizes the policy of promoting competition in offering this exercise to the private sector, it also expresses concern that accountability is dispersed among different stakeholders,” the DepEd said. With PNA