Representatives of the Association for Efficient and Responsible Governance AGER and of the public association “Solidary Parents” pointed out a number of problems, shortcomings and risks in the procurement of school textbooks by the Ministry of Education and Research. According to them, these acquisitions are made on the basis of the regulations on the selection and acquisition of school textbooks, adopted in April 2022. However, the provisions of these regulations that were approved by an order run counter to provisions of the Law on Public Procurement.
In a press conference hosted by IPN, AGER president Maria Kovalchuk said that on December 15, 2023, the provisions referring to public procurement, including textbooks, were given a final reading and adopted. Under these provisions, in the process of selecting textbooks, the price matters in the proportion of 30%. “The passed amendment cannot guarantee the quality of textbooks as long as the procurement procedures are carried out according to the provisions of regulations, while the provisions of Law 131 of 2015 on Public Procurement are mostly applied only formally,” stated Maria Kovalchuk.
Olga Diaconu, AGER project coordinator, said that the evaluation carried out by the National Center for the Approval of Textbooks at present is kept secret. The textbook assessment files are confidential and even the members of the working group do not have access to them. The names of the evaluators are also confidential. Their names no longer appear on the cover of textbooks after the completion of the textbook evaluation. Another flaw is that bidders only have access to information about the evaluation of the content of their samples, not yet of those of competitors. The challenges are examined by the same National Center for the Approval of Textbooks. The regulations exclude the National Agency for Dispute Resolution from the process of dealing with challenges concerning the results of the assessment of the textbooks’ quality.
The AGER project coordinator noted that the application of the regulations on the acquisition of textbooks involves a number of risks. Among these risks are the low efficiency of procurement procedures and deficient supply of textbooks to students. Also, the opacity of the procurement process stimulates fraud and the conclusion of anti-competitive agreements.
According to the executive director of “Solidary Parents” Ala Revenco, the competition is reduced. At the last textbook procurement procedure, for 80% of the lots there was only one bid or no bid. “The sophisticated and lengthy procedure – from the moment the purchase is launched until textbooks reach schools - can take from one to two years – consequently leads to failure to provide educational institutions with the textbooks needed for a high-qualitative training process,” noted Ala Revenco.
The representatives of civil society recommend modifying the procedure for purchasing textbooks by separating the procurement of services for compiling textbooks from printing services. Another proposal is for the Ministry of Education to take responsibility for drawing up the content of textbooks. It is also recommended to develop mechanisms for monitoring the demand for textbooks and to systematically plan textbook procurement procedures. Conflicts of interest should be avoided, while the technical characteristics of textbooks should be reviewed and improved.
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