DepEd adopts ‘Textbook Walk’

(Conclusion) 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 they reach the local public schools, roll out the red carpet for these instructional materials so crucial to their children’s education. This practice has been christened “Textbook Walk," a brainchild of G-Watch that was successfully piloted in four DepEd divisions 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. DepEd is adopting “Textbook Walk" this schoolyear 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 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 DepEd 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. 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," said Parafina. DepEd 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 DepEd’s 2,359 district offices and 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 schoolyear. 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 DepEd for the delivery of textbooks from the districts to their schools. 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 DepEd’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 DepED to use its trucks to help transport textbooks from district offices to the recipient schools. Pilor said, however, DepEd’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. 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 DepEd 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 DepEd was claiming a 1:1 ratio. The DepEd-IMCS 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. DepEd 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. Last February, the World Bank commended DepEd 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.")