The Senate is investigating why the Department of Education procured only 27 out of the 90 required textbook titles for Grades 1 to 10 since the K-12 curriculum was launched in 2013.

The Senate Committee on Basic Education was prodded through proposed Senate Resolution 972 to conduct the probe.

The resolution cited the findings of a deficient textbook procurement by DepEd, as noted by EDCOM II — the Second Congressional Commission on Education.

Panel chair Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said textbooks enable learners to acquire the necessary knowledge, thus the “urgent need to address the problem.”

EDCOM II’s Year One Report said DepEd managed to procure only 27 of the required 90 textbook titles, and that only learners in Grades 5 and 6 had complete sets of textbooks for all subjects.

He said the inquiry is necessary to identify and address procurement challenges and gaps in the education system and to help craft amendatory legislation.

During EDCOM II’s consultation with DepEd, the National Book Development Board and groups of private textbook publishers identified several procurement issues, such as insufficient development time and a prolonged review process.

Other issues include high participation costs and pricing issues. The report also flagged the low utilization of the budget allocated for textbooks and other instructional materials.

From 2018 to 2022, more than P12.6 billion was allocated for textbooks and other instructional materials. However, only P4.47 billion, or 35.3 percent of this allocation, was obligated, and only P951.9 million, or 7.5 percent, was disbursed.

Without textbooks, Gatchalian said learners and teachers use learners’ manuals, self-learning modules, activity sheets, and other locally developed learning resources.

“The production of SLMs was charged against the learning resources under the flexible learning options, and the funds allocated were not used for the procurement of textbooks. However, concerns were raised about the quality of the SLMs and teachers extracting content from copyrighted textbooks,” he said.