MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Education's (DepEd) Manila Division Office on Friday apologized for "any harm caused to individuals and groups", after one of the agency's self-learning modules placed presidential bet Vice President Leni Robredo in a bad light.
The DepEd's self-learning module "Introduction to Philosophy of the Human Person (Methods of Philosophizing)" published for Grade 11 students earlier made rounds online after the answers of two of its multiple choice questions referred to Robredo.
Related Stories
Photo from SHS Modules
"The Division office expressed its apology for any harm that the incident may have caused to individuals or groups. It committed to strictly abide by the quality control and conformance review process set by the Department when developing and producing learning modules," the DepEd Manila Division Office said in a statement sent to reporters Friday.
It ordered its school heads to recall all hard copies of the self-learning module, and already took down the digital copy from the division's learning resource management portal.
The "locally-published" learning material "did not undergo regional conformance reviews", and was published in Sept. 2020- during the time when the Central Office was not yet releasing fully-reviewed modules, it explained.
The division office added that they were able to pinpoint the writer responsible, but said they passed away in 2020.
"DepEd assures the public as well as candidates in the ongoing elections that we are exerting all efforts to warn our officials and personnel, including teachers, against participating in partisan politics," it said.
This comes around a month before the national and local elections.
This is not the first time that errors were found in DepEd's self-learning modules. In 2020, mistakes were discovered in learning resources which were produced and printed in a rush for distance learning classes amid the pandemic.