Senate to probe DepEd’s poor performance

The Senate is set to conduct a probe into the Department of Education (DepEd)’s poor performance in implementing its critical programs despite receiving the largest budgetary allocation annually, Sen. Sonny Angara said yesterday.

He said he was incensed by the disappointing performance of DepEd in 2018 as reported by the Commission on Audit (COA), “which showed how poorly the agency is performing to the detriment of our students.”

“How do we expect our youth to be prepared for college and to find decent jobs later on in life when they’re not getting the best education that they deserve in grade school and high school?” Angara said in a statement.

Citing the COA report, he said nearly 27 million textbooks were not delivered for use of the students and there were also zero deliveries for some items necessary for the success of the K to 12 program.

Education, he added, always gets the biggest share of government funds because this will ensure that the country remains competitive with people as its backbone.

“So why are we shortchanging our people on this front with such inefficiencies?” he asked.

Angara is set to file a resolution next week to look into the chronic delays in the procurement and distribution to the end users of critical Basic Education Facilities items and the adverse effects of this on basic education outcomes, including the performance of students.

The DepEd said it was supposed to construct 47,000 new classrooms for the year but only managed to complete 11 classrooms.

“That’s not even one percent of the target. And the COA saw some classrooms two years delayed but were reported as 99 percent complete,” he lamented.

The DepEd was also supposed to distribute 38.5 million textbooks and instructional/ learning materials for students and teachers, but was able to deliver 11.8 million.

During its audit, COA also discovered that 3.4 million copies of instructional materials worth P113.7 million procured from 2014 to 2017 were left rotting inside DepEd warehouses.

Various errors were also noted by the COA in some textbooks for Grade 3 students, the cost of which was pegged at P254.3 million.

A total of 3,183 science and math packages, which consist of equipment essential to learning under the K to 12 program, were targeted for distribution in 2018, but none were delivered to their intended recipients.

In the DepEd report, state auditors saw that there were undelivered science and mathematics equipment (SME); unutilized SMEs due to excessive quantities allocated and delivered to schools that did not need them; lack of knowledge and proper training of teachers to use these equipment; and a lack of storage rooms or laboratories to house these items.

Even equipment for the technical-vocational-livelihood (TVL) track of the K to 12 program, amounting to 4,600 units did not reach schools.

The COA found that items for the P4.6-billion redesigned technical-vocational high school program for school year 2016 - 2017 were also unutilized or underutilized. It noted the late construction of buildings and deferred course offerings for the TVL tracks, which contributed to the dismal performance in this area.

DepEd Undersecretary Annalyn Sevilla, in response to the latest COA report, vowed yesterday to release millions of unused textbooks and other learning materials procured as early as 2014.

She claimed that DepEd has already allocated the materials and is in the process of releasing these to lower units.

“The DepEd management assured that they will revisit the existing DepEd guidelines on the procurement of instructional materials and will evaluate the control on buffer stocks,” she added.