Learning packages, not textbooks, for K to 12

Time constraint has forced the distribution of learning packages instead of textbooks in public schools to get the government’s enhanced basic education program, or K to 12, up and running, said an official of the Department of Education (DepEd).

Edwin Uy, the DepEd’s program coordinator, told the Inquirer on Friday that the packages were “more cost-effective” in ensuring that the materials conform with new standards and were “faster” to publish.

He said it would take publishers a year and a half to two years to publish textbooks and that this could not be an option for the department.

“We couldn’t wait for one to two years for new materials,” Uy said, pointing out that the learning materials for Grades 1 and 7 rolled out last year needed to be distributed as soon as possible. “We felt that was the best strategy to ensure that the teachers, our students had the adequate learning resources.”

While Uy acknowledged that the DepEd “might have missed out on certain things” in the distributed materials and said this was why it had opened its lines for feedback and comments from the field.

Learning package

Uy, however, said he had not heard of a letter from Antonio Calipjo Go, the academic supervisor of Marian School of Quezon City and self-designated textbook crusader, who said he had found 658 errors in the 172-page “Learning Package for Grade 7 English, First and Second Quarters.”

Go said he sent letters to Education Secretary Armin Luistro and other DepEd officials, but had not received a response. Luistro last year called on Go in his office and asked him to help in straightening out the textbooks.

“If Mr. Go did reach out to Secretary (Luistro), he’s aware … he’s more than aware of it. But I don’t know what the follow-through was,” Uy said.

He said that last year, Luistro told him that the DepEd was working with Go in several areas related to K to 12.

“If he wrote to the secretary … then I’ll get it and we can feed it back to the people who are developing the very resources,” he said.

Uy said the DepEd had received feedback, not just from Go, but from others as well. Comments will be considered when the “full K to 12 curriculum standards” are hammered out in November, he said. The collated reports on “glaring mistakes” would be verified and advisories would be sent out all around, Uy said.

The printing of the corrected materials, though, can be done for the next school year. “So from a cost standpoint, it’s cheaper if we issue advisories,” he said.

Monitoring and evaluation are an “iterative process” done annually, he said, adding that the teaching material needs to “evolve with succeeding implementations.”

The learning resources should “get better through the years,” he said.

Supplementary

Go has also said error-filled old titles remained in use.

“If we were relying solely on that one textbook, that’s probably valid. But we’re not,” Uy said.

The “old” books, he said, were only “supplementary” and were used to “enrich the discussion in classrooms.”

“The textbooks that are already in schools are existing reference materials … . But the new pedagogies are embedded in the new curriculum, and that’s why there should be new learning resources,” Uy said.

He denied Go’s criticism that the K to 12 program had not been pilot-tested.

The mother tongue-based multilingual education, for example, he said, was piloted in 900 schools across the country before it was implemented in the last school year.

Uy said 282 technical vocational high schools had served as “laboratory” to determine their relevance in the new program.

“So what K to 12 does is formalize a lot of the different insights and experiences in the past years. That doesn’t mean it’s perfect, there are really things that need to be changed and improved. But the new curriculum, resources, they take into account what we learned in the past years,” he said.