The Department of Education’s recent announcement that it has finally-finally-secured all 105 required textbook titles for public schools should be cause for quiet satisfaction. Instead, it serves as a damning indictment of just how far the country has allowed its educational infrastructure to crumble. When the procurement of basic learning materials becomes headline news, we must confront an uncomfortable truth: we have normalized failure to such a degree that competence now looks like revolution. Let us be clear about what Education Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara has accomplished. In a single year, the DepEd procured nearly four times the total number of textbook titles secured across the entire preceding decade. Between 2014 and 2023, the agency managed to deliver only 27 out of 88 required titles-a pathetic 31 percent completion rate that left generations of students sharing tattered, outdated books or learning from photocopied pages. The new policy framework, anchored by DepEd Order No. 008, has compressed a three-year procurement nightmare into a streamlined process with strict timelines and transparent evaluation.
This is undeniably progress. But we must resist the urge to celebrate.
The fact that we are celebrating the procurement of textbooks-the absolute baseline of educational infrastructure-reveals how catastrophically low we have set our expectations. Textbooks are not innovation. They are not reform. They are the floor, not the ceiling, of what a functional education system provides. In any developed nation, this would be routine administrative work, worthy of a line item in a quarterly report, not a press conference with triumphant rhetoric about ‘restoration of service.’
The cost of this decade of dysfunction cannot be calculated merely in pesos or procurement statistics. It is measured in the millions of students who sat in classrooms without proper materials, in the teachers who improvised lessons from memory or photocopies, and in the country’s persistent humiliation at the bottom of international assessments like PISA. While other nations debated pedagogical innovations and digital integration, the Philippines was still struggling to put paper books into children’s hands.
Secretary Angara’s acknowledgment that ’27 titles in a decade is your baseline’ is refreshingly candid, but it should also infuriate citizens. How did we accept this for so long? How did three-year procurement cycles for single titles become standard operating procedure? The EDCOM II findings exposed systemic bottlenecks that were obvious to anyone who cared to look-redundant review cycles, opaque evaluation processes, and a bureaucracy more concerned with procedure than outcomes. That these obstacles required a complete policy overhaul in 2025, rather than incremental fixes years ago, speaks to a failure of political will across multiple administrations.
Textbooks alone won’t reverse the country’s educational decline. PISA points to deeper issues-widespread poverty that keeps children out of school, an overloaded curriculum focused on quantity over comprehension, and resource gaps beyond printed materials, including teacher training, classroom infrastructure, and digital connectivity. Textbooks are necessary but insufficient: they’re the starting line, not the finish.
So yes, let us acknowledge that the DepEd has done what should have been done years ago. Let us recognize that political will, when properly directed, can dismantle bureaucratic inertia. But let us not confuse remediation with achievement. The Philippines is not yet an educational success story-we are merely a nation that has stopped sabotaging its own students.
The real test begins now: Can we maintain this momentum? Can we extend this efficiency to other neglected corners of the system? Can we finally build an education sector where the delivery of basic resources is so routine it never makes the news again?
Our students deserve an education system that does not treat textbooks as headline-worthy breakthroughs, but as the bare minimum they are entitled to. After 10 years of failure, we should demand nothing less.