Textbook Count and Civil Society Participation: Effecting System Reforms in the Department of Education

The Department of Education (DepEd) is the largest agency of the Philippine government, both in terms of personnel and budget allocation. As of March 2004, it administers a total of 41,388 schools, with a total of 456,317 teachers and 40,000 non-teaching personnel nationwide. Although only three percent of its total budget of roughly a hundred billion pesos a year 1 is allotted for the construction of infrastructure, the purchase of furniture, textbooks and other instructional materials, the amount spent for these procurements is sizeable.

In the early 1990s, reports of ghost deliveries, under-deliveries, long delays in delivery, poor physical quality of textbooks, and unqualified bidders winning bids hounded the department. Social Weather Station (SWS) surveys then indicated that DepEd was considered one of the five most corrupt agencies in the country.

Clearly, system-wide reforms were needed: to prevent and combat corruption, and to restore the people’s faith in the department. One such reform was Textbook Count.