By Joy Aceron | 30 June 2026
When I delivered a message in the formal launching of Multiply-Ed on February 7, 2022 in Pasig City, I said:
“Obviously, this is just the beginning. There is a huge work ahead. But if the recent past efforts of the team were of any indication, the road ahead will surely be vibrant, productive and full of lessons on accountability and citizen empowerment towards a resilient learning environment in public education system.”
With Multiply-Ed on its sixth year, it is time to account whether we have delivered on what we have set out to do.
That same message is entitled “Scaling Textbook Count, Youth-Led Style.” Ultimately, this initiative is about scaling. But what does scaling mean? What do we mean when we say we want to scale Textbook Count.
Many of us here have heard of Textbook Count. Implemented from 2002 to 2007, it became a blueprint of social accountability here and abroad. Until now, countries are trying to replicate Textbook Count. It has achieved a scale that perhaps no other social accountability initiative has achieved.
- It enhanced transparency, participation and accountability in education governance.
- It improved efficiency and effectiveness of textbook delivery—cut the prices, and reduced the time of procurement and delivery.
- It reclaimed public trust in the Department of Education (DepEd).
The dream. And a key factor that it has achieved all that was scale.
By scale, we refer to several dimensions:
- Scale in terms of how big the initiative is—the number of participants and organizations and its coverage.
- Scale in terms of the levels of decision-making it engages: from the very local (in this case, schools) to the international.
There are two other dimensions of scale referred to in the experience of Multiply-Ed:
- Scale in terms of achieving gains to extend to other education services and programs since Textbook Count achieved reforms only in textbook delivery.
- Another that I would add is scale in terms of sustaining the actions.
The conceptualization and generation of support for Multiply-Ed took long, given the development of the strategy based on lessons from past experience and building of shared agenda at the international level. What followed was the scoping and contextualization of the updated international design to what would be needed and applicable in the context of the Philippines at the time. The year 2021 was primarily about the pandemic that exacerbated existing flaws and gaps in public education system, which was adapting rapidly to drastic changes brought about by COVID-19.
We had two main propositions:
- We could scale, covering all the dimensions I discussed by organizing and mobilizing the youth and students that are the most immediate stakeholders of education and comprising more than half of our population.
- By scaling, we could address flaws and gaps in the public education system across many services and programs primarily by enhancing transparency, participation and accountability at different levels of decision-making.
So, have we achieved this?
The quick direct answer is “yes,” and we have and will have several reports explaining how we say so as well as a conference that will focus on sharing our experience and analysis. But let me provide some salient points on the explanation as a preview.
Were we able to scale accountability by organizing and mobilizing youth and students? The national, almost universal, coverage of Textbook Count will be hard to achieve because it did have two contextual enablers that may not be present today. The political context of early 2000s was characterized by the general euphoria or optimism over People Power 2. International organizations and the development community had anti-corruption as their main agenda providing the needed support to civil society, and there was a general sense of hope for change for the better.
The leadership in the Department of Education then, particularly the late Undersecretary Mike Luz, was committed and indeed delivered overall transformation in the textbook delivery system, including DepEd’s procurement processes. Again, this extremely favorable national political context did not exist from 2021 to the present.
So how did X-Ed achieve scale, nonetheless, that delivered results?
To connect the dots from scale to results, there is a different kind of ‘youth-led’ which Multiply-Ed harnessed that made it work. One key takeaway from Multiply-Ed is that not all youth engagements are created equal. There is a specific way of doing youth-led that makes a lot of difference. We have an upcoming paper and conference on this, so I will not spoil it.
Let’s focus a bit on scale—what scale did Multiply-Ed achieve?
Multiply-Ed covered multiple levels of decision-making—from schools to international, from planning/ budgeting down to procurement to actual receipt of services by beneficiaries.
Multiply-Ed covered multiple services and improved government responses as evidenced by its commitment tracker not only in textbooks, but also in classrooms, teaching quality, support to marginalized learners and overall education governance. In today’s context where participation even have to be justified and asserted, Multiply-Ed was able to generate 381 commitments from duty-bearers and got governments to deliver or respond to it in varying levels at 87%.
It did all that in a way that youth and students were not simply monitoring at one stage at one point (such as checking of the number of textbooks delivered in their schools in Textbook Count). It did all that with youth and students engaging the most important decision-making spaces in government: in Congress to influence the budget, in Local School Boards to engage local governments in the use of the Special Education Fund, in electoral processes to mainstream education as a campaign issue. It did that with even marginalized learners asking questions about the services that they should be receiving and identifying and proposing solutions to the policies and norms that contribute to their marginalization.
- Eman from Cagayan de Oro did not only monitor school performance; he went to local government meetings to present their findings and follow-up commitments.
- Isni shared G-Watch Lanao’s education and health monitoring experience in Malaysia twice, particularly how they help resolve issues that have been left unaddressed for decades even after many calls and attempts by communities, governments and even the media, such as finally removing a dumpsite in front of Racman Pimping Maniri Dumara National Science High School.
- Kharce John, Zairen and Jeah, indigenous students, and Ma’am Julie, a teacher from the high school Mike of G-Watch Puerto Princesa Laniag helped establish in Marufinas, one of the remotest and poorest town in Puerto Princesa, got to interact with other students and teachers to discuss proposed solutions to persisting gaps in their schools.
- Jassy, a Moro youth, got to assert their right to self-expression, while excelling in school and undertaking efforts to improve education governance in BARMM.
- Ken won over critical champions, the division superintendent of Himamaylan who later got promoted to the regional level in Negros, and the Vice Mayor of Himamaylan, and together they successfully implemented citizen-led monitoring in Negros for the first time that opened up new participatory spaces and is about to deliver a Right to Information legislation that can further advance transparency.
- Loida did not only connect the dots between education and water governance, she helped pressure their local government and other policy actors to do something about the water crisis in San Jose del Monte, Bulacan.
- Seventeen School Governance Councils (SGCs), the awardees of the first-ever SGC Awards, out of 103 amazing entries, did not only make sure their SGCs were active, but that their SGCs also led in responding to challenges in schools and in their locality that affect learning outcomes—a feat given the lack of program support to existing participatory mechanisms in education governance.
- Collectively, as a team, Multiply-Ed youth and student leaders came up with a reform agenda that are from, for and by the youth and if addressed can truly deliver accessible, quality, resilient, inclusive public education where #NoOneisExcluded. A reform agenda that can and will guide education reform for decades to come.
There are many more inspiring stories underscoring one thing: Multiply-Ed showed what it means to do meaningful citizen participation. The gain that Multiply-Ed scaled most is empowerment. Challenges and hindrances in context, including the overall decline in the quality of democracy, forced us to rely on ourselves, to be citizen-led in doing accountability. Citizen-led accountability led to meaningful participation that can beat all odds.
We showed that amid all possible constraints, quality citizen participation could also deliver results. The hindrances and limits that we faced forced us to dig deeper, engage more meaningfully and set a more reliable foundation for sustained meaningful engagement by youth and students.
How much more if we find true pro-active allies in government or if we get to bring one of us in the highest echelons of power?
Let me end by setting the task ahead through a quote from someone we lost because of problems of accountability and responsiveness in the private sector—another agenda that we need to grapple with in this country where concentration of power and wealth in politics and economy intertwines and perpetuates the vicious cycle of poverty, patronage, corruption and impunity. Rene Baterbonia, a poor indigenous kid from Mindanao, a newly-graduate of senior high school, who was excelling and achieving his big dreams through honest hard work while being a good person, said in an interview: “Hindi yan binibigay. Kinukuha yan,” referring to successes like championship.
Even the weakest, poorest, humblest of us can win big dreams, but we need to take it, claim it and fight for it. It will be a long fight because impunity and corruption have been normalized in our society. What we do here is swimming against the current—it is raging against the dying of the light that has been waged for centuries and will be waged hopefully not much longer.
This work of advancing education reform with meaningful citizen participation—where we matter meaningfully and citizens are at the heart because it is the only way true change happens—is such a big dream. It will never be given to us—not by powers-that-be that perpetuate the status quo by keeping citizens as mere spectators, beneficiaries, clients and followers. Not by bystanders or fence-sitters who only use their positions to protect their backs.
Let the gains we have achieved be our additional tools and armor, our new sources of inspiration and strength. Let us continue to harness the power of collective action, and shared hopes and dreams.
Let us weaponize truth and accountability to serve the common good.
Because if we want good governance where we matter—as it should be—we need to take it.
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You can watch the remarks here.
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