Lawmakers warned of a literary crisis following revelations the country’s Department of Education (DepEd) had only acquired 27 textbook titles in the last 10 years.
House of Representatives (HoR) Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Party Rep. Antonio Tinio sounded the alarm over the continuing scarcity and non-use of textbooks in Philippine public schools.
Tinio said the situation reflects not only procurement bottlenecks but a deeper policy shift under the country’s current K-12 national curriculum that pushed textbooks aside in favor of modules and other learning materials.
“One of the standout data points in the EDCOM 2 (Education Commission) report is that [in] over a decade, DepEd procured only 27 textbook titles,” Tinio said in a congressional hearing on Monday.
“EDCOM diagnoses it mainly as procurement bottlenecks, and DepEd now says they have ‘solved’ this and procured 105 titles in one school year. But the bigger concern is that this is not only a procurement issue; it is a pedagogical issue,” the educator-lawmaker said.
Tinio said the reason textbook procurement collapsed for years is that DepEd “largely turned away from using textbooks” after K-12 curriculum, shifting to modules and other learning materials—often delivered inconsistently and sometimes reduced to teacher-made PowerPoint presentations.
Public schoolchildren are no longer given textbooks to read and study, Tinio said, leading to a “literary crisis.”
Tinio contrasted the situation with private schools that continue using textbooks while many public school learners have little more than photocopied modules.
“In private schools, textbooks remained central. In public schools, students often have no books to bring home, reread, and learn from,” Tinio said. “How can we build literacy without sustained exposure to books?” he asked.
Muntinlupa City Rep. Jaime Fresnedi supported Tinio’s observations, reporting serious gaps in delivery based on updates from their Schools Division Office, including grade levels with no textbook delivery at all.
Education officials told the hearing that they have amended DepEd their procurement and delivery timeline, reporting the agency is expecting the delivery of 31 textbook titles before the start of the new academic year in more than a month’s time.
The Philippines consistently ranked at or near the bottom in reading comprehension in global assessments like the Programme for International Student Assessment 2018 and 2022 studies by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. # (Raymund B. Villanueva)
