Schools should give up printed yearbooks, just put out digital form, says DepEd chief

Education Secretary Armin Luistro. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines — Schools should stop publishing yearbooks that only add to the expenses of students, Education Secretary Armin Luistro said on Sunday.

Luistro said the expense could be avoided by producing the traditional annuals in digital form.

Since digital yearbooks are stored on computer discs and no longer printed, they can be produced at a fraction of the cost of publishing a hard copy version.

“In this age, published yearbooks are outmoded. What’s in are digital yearbooks. So I’m taking this opportunity to say, don’t produce yearbooks anymore because they’re already outmoded,” Luistro said in an interview.

He took exception to schools that insist on producing yearbooks and making their graduating students pay for them on top of other graduation expenses.

“If the school produces a yearbook, they’re like saying, those behind this are already old,” Luistro said.

“What’s in are digital yearbooks. You can do a lot more [in digital form], you can upload a video and put it on YouTube. The kids today are more creative. And it won’t add to the [graduation] expenses,” he said.

Luistro raised the argument against the yearbook expense as he reissued a Department of Education (DepEd) end-of-schoolyear order to all schools, both public and private, against “excessive spending” for graduation programs.

The DepEd can order public schools not to collect graduation fees and to use their own operating budgets for the graduation program but it can only advise private schools to keep their graduation programs simple.

But the DepEd allows parent-teacher associations to give “donations in cash or in kind” for the students’ graduation program.

“Contribution for the annual yearbook, if any, should be on a voluntary basis,” Luistro said in his Feb. 25 order.

The idea of imposing a yearbook expense in the public schools is anathema to Luistro, even if the publication has been agreed upon by the parents through the PTA.

“Again our rule is, [public school] principals and teachers cannot collect [yearbook fees]. If this is a project of the PTA, we still need to see how much they will be collecting,” he said.

Classes will end this month in most schools.

Graduations in public schools are set either for March 27 or 28.

However, schools affected by disasters such as the September Zamboanga City siege and November’s Super typhoon “Yolanda” (Haiyan) are expected to hold their graduation ceremonies a few days later.

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