Thursday, October 11, 2007 Editorial: Whose head(s) should roll?
IN WEDNESDAY'S issue of a Manila-based newspaper (a broadsheet), one front page story was captioned COA finds 2.5M textbooks unused.
In its 2006 audit report on the Department of Education (DepEd), the COA disclosed that 2.5 million copies of textbooks or instructional materials costing around P186.96 million have remained undistributed. The reasons given: (1) oversupply, (2) deficiency in contents, and (3) scarcity of funds and vehicles for delivery.
Not only that, the undistributed textbooks were part of some P329 million worth of textbooks, information and communication technology (ICT) products, computers and instructional materials "lying around in the offices of school officials or in stockrooms destroyed by molds" the COA report said.
Shouldn't textbooks be placed in the hands of students? DepEd has an explanation: The textbooks did not comply with the revised education curriculum and the minimum learning competencies.
Now, if the 2.5 million copies represent an oversupply of the same textbooks now in the hands of students, then these students are reading books that do not comply with the revised curriculum and the minimum learning competencies. The books are riddled with factual and grammatical errors, according to the DepEd itself.
How come the textbooks were procured in the first place despite the glaring errors? The failure to maximize scarce resources has resulted in an enormous waste of government funds in the amount of P186 million--and a studentry whose minds are riddled with wrong information and who are prone to commit grammatical errors.
That's not all. We are talking here about other things that add up to the P329 million worth of materials that include P138.84 million worth of computers, which were reported as either missing or underutilized due to lack of technical resources and facilities to operate them. In fact, the bulk of these computers valued at P115 million are being used for administrative purposes in the offices of principals and district supervisors instead.
Here we are, a poor country acting like a rich one and wasting taxpayers' money on school materials and equipment that hardly benefit the target users--the students. Should we wonder why the quality of public education has deteriorated and public coffers depleted unnecessarily?
Even if certain heads up there roll for their stupidity or incompetence or dishonesty--or all of those--there is no guarantee that those who will come after them will be any better.
