Public School and Textbook Publishing.
Section 10
SEC. 10. Public School and Textbook Publishing. — The DECS shall consult with the Board in prescribing the guidelines, rules, and regulations in preparing the minimum learning competencies, and/or prototypes and other specifications for books required by public elementary and secondary schools. The DECS shall confine itself to: preparing the minimum learning competencies, and/ or prototypes and other specifications for the books and/or manuscripts called for; testing, evaluating, selecting and approving the manuscripts or books to be submitted by publishers for multiple adoption; providing assistance in the distribution of textbooks to the public school systems; and promulgating with the participation and assistance of the Board rules and regulations for the private book publishers in the call, testing, evaluation, selection, approval, as well as production specification and acquisition of public school textbooks. The printing of public elementary and secondary school textbooks shall be done on a regional or provincial level, whenever economically feasible. The DECS shall within a period of not more than three (3) years from the effectivity of this Act phase out its elementary and secondary textbook publication and distribution functions and shall support the phasing in of private sector publishers to assume these functions here. For its part, the Board shall monitor and conduct an annual evaluation of the progress of the shift of functions from the DECS to the private sector.