One of the biggest contributors to low performance of students is said to be persistent shortage of textbooks in both primary and secondary schools, according to the latest Auditor General’s report.
The problem which started several years back seems to have intensified in some parts of the country whilst for others there was oversupply of textbooks.
This has been attributed to lack of internal controls like supervision, record keeping, monitoring and reconciliation of expenditure.
“We observed that in all Junior Secondary Schools there was only one class set of textbooks provided for about 26 to 30 students. The Ministry acknowledged that there was shortage of text books in schools mainly due to the inadequate budget allocated. The South East Region was aware that schools had a serious shortage of books. The shortage was a result of large enrollments and allocation of limited funds,” says the AG’s report.
However, in some schools in other parts of the country, hundreds of textbooks were gathering dust in shelves with no use. “In some schools several books were oversupplied whilst others there were shortage observed. Some schools were supplied with more books than required even in instances where they provided a record of the needs. There were some old syllabus textbooks found in several schools that were no longer relevant to the current syllabus resulting in wasteful expenditure,” the AG observed.
The auditors further observed that the cause of this discrepancy was that both the Regional Office and the Department of Secondary Education Headquarters procured textbooks for schools resulting in excess in some schools.
Another shocking finding was that books valued at approximately P893,000.00 had not been delivered by some publishers yet they had received payment for the orders.
Overstaffing was also observed in the South East Region where out of 75 schools, 33 had more permanent teachers than the stipulated requirement, resulting in 139 teachers with little or no work to do.
However, the ministry indicated that an old computer system allowed more than one officer to be attached to one post which is not compatible with the new Oracle system.
“In some instances, temporary teachers were employed to relieve teachers who went on confinement or unpaid leave. Upon return of the substantive position holders, the temporary teachers were retained”.
Some of the temporary teachers were later engaged during the outbreak of COVID19 to reduce congestion in classrooms.
