Luistro vows textbook, desk shortage over by year end

MANILA, Philippines—Before the year ends, Education Secretary Armin Luistro expects to strike two items off his shortage list: textbooks and desks.

The Department of Education is hoping to fill shortages in school chairs and books in five core subjects through its own acquisition and partnerships with the private sector and other government agencies, Luistro said Friday.

“By December 2011, our target is that we would have two of five shortages addressed: seats and textbooks,” Luistro said.

Luistro said the public school sector still lacks at least 2.5 million chairs to seat every student in 45,000 public elementary and high schools.

Delivery is already underway to fill the backlog in textbooks in five core subjects—Math, Science, English, Filipino and Araling Panlipunan.

Luistro said schools need 100 million useable volumes of books in a given year.

DepEd has long been targeting to provide both school necessities on a one-to-one ratio, but the severe backlog has left students in crowded schools sharing books or sitting on the classroom floor during lessons.

The private sector and other government agencies have also pitched in to address the shortages.

DepEd has a standing partnership with the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority, the Department of Environment and Natural Resources and the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation to turn confiscated logs into school chairs.

Corporate-led Philippine Business for Social Progress also revived its school desks program to bring close to 500,000 chairs to at least 2,500 schools.

DepEd also continues to tap partnerships with local government units and the private sector to fill a backlog of some 60,000 classrooms nationwide.

Luistro has secured at least P1 billion worth of co-funding pledges from different LGUs and is also working with PBSP to build 10,000 classrooms in two years.