Textbooks in private schools to be reviewed

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said yesterday that the Department of Education (DepEd) would conduct a study on textbooks being used in private schools in the face of a challenge from the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to ensure that students in the country use quality textbooks.

Lapus said the DepEd would coordinate with the Fund Assistance for Private Education (FAPE) for content evaluation of textbooks used in private schools.

He said the study would also look into the textbook procurement systems and check if private institutions are doing content evaluation.

The DepEd chief stressed that with the department’s reformed textbook procurement system, they are now looking into the quality of books used in private schools.

He noted that unlike in public schools, private schools do not observe a “one title” textbook policy, which means that they are free to choose what to use for a given subject.

With such a system, Lapus said the effort to review private school textbooks would be a major undertaking, involving thousands of textbooks.

Last May 19, Lapus banned two defective textbooks used in private schools.

These are the “Simply Science in the Next Century” Grades 1 to 6 series and “Harnessing Arts for English Today” Grades 1 to 6 series, both published by Phoenix Publishing House Inc.

The books were found to contain numerous grammatical and other errors by quality textbook crusader Antonio Calipjo-Go, an academic supervisor of a private school in Quezon City.

In his order, Lapus directed private schools not to use the two textbooks following a review and evaluation conducted by the DepEd’s Instructional Materials Council Secretariat, which also found “major errors” in the reading materials.      – Rainier Allan Ronda