SENATOR Sherwin Gatchalian on Wednesday stressed the need for the government to ensure that every learner has a complete set of textbooks to help improve the performance of the country’s public school learners.

In its Year One Report, the Second Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM 2 revealed that since 2012, only 27 textbooks titles out of 90 were procured for Grade 1 to Grade 10.

The report also found that only learners from Grades 5 and 6 have complete sets of textbooks for all subjects.

The EDCOM also revealed low utilization of the budget for textbooks and other instructional materials. Out of more than P12.6 billion allocated from 2018 to 2022, only about P4.47 billion was obligated and P951.9 million was disbursed.

“Issues hounding textbook procurement included insufficient development time, high participation costs, prolonged review processes, and pricing issues,” Gatchalian said.

While textbook procurement should only take 180 days, the process takes an average of three years.

To ensure a 1:1 student-textbook ratio, Gatchalian’s office estimates that around P28 billion, around 4% of the Department of Education’s more than P700 billion allocation, is needed.

“We must solve the process. I’m very optimistic, I can lobby to allocate P28 billion a year to procure textbooks but even though we allocate P28 billion a year, if it will take you three years to spend it, sayang lang,” said the Senate Committee on Basic Education Chairman.

“My suggestion is to liberalize the procurement of textbooks so that we will not be burdened by logistics and the bidding process because that takes time, and this is connected to learner performance. If only our Grade 5 and 6 learners have complete textbooks, we cannot expect so much from our learners to perform well because the basic learning material is non-existent,” he added.

Gatchalian also cited the example of Japan’s Textbook Authorization Research Council, which accredits textbook titles and ensures compliance with standards.

The list of accredited titles guides Japan’s schools and students when it comes to securing textbooks.

Gatchalian urged the DepEd to study Japan’s model as it would spare the agency from procurement, manuscript development, and delivery bottlenecks.

Gatchalian added that he will seek amendments to the Book Publishing Industry Development Act or Republic Act No. 8047 to streamline the textbook procurement process.