National Unity Party (NUP) president LRay Villafuerte has said that resigned senator and incoming Secretary Juan Edgardo Angara of the Department of Education (DepEd) needs to do a “serious rethinking” of state and private-sector financial support for the DepEd to address, among others, the acute fund lack responsible for the perennial shortages in classrooms, teachers and school facilities that have for long undermined the quality of Philippine education.
“As an education reform advocate for two decades now in the Congress responsible for a slew of laws advancing the interests of our students and teachers , Secretary Sonny (Angara), I believe, knows that a sea change for the better in the declining quality of our extended basic education or K12 from Kindergarten to Grade 12 is contingent on wiping out the nagging shortages in teachers, classrooms and other school facilities responsible in large part for our learners turning out among the world’s top school underachievers,” Villafuerte said.
“Before we can talk about reversing the outcome of our children’s performance in the periodic global PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development or OECD) study—where our students are among the underachievers in science, mathematics and reading—the DepEd needs to deal first with how to wipe out under the Marcos administration the nagging shortages in teachers and classrooms, among others, that have skewed teacher-student ratios and undermined the learning process,” Villafuerte said.
Because of budgetary constraints, “What the DepEd has been doing for decades now is to increase its annual spending on the basis of the projected increase in enrollment per schoolyear, rather than work on wiping out the total shortages in teachers, classrooms and school facilities in one fell swoop or in the short term,” said Villafuerte, who is a CamSur congressman and majority leader of the bicameral Commission on Appointments (CA) that screens presidential appointees.
Because of this, the issue of perennial shortages never goes away, and it confronts the DepEd at the start of every schoolyear, he said, hence affecting the quality of training for our students in kindergarten, elementary and high school.
“We cannot radically improve the quality of basic education unless we are able to ensure first that our students have enough teachers to teach them and enough classrooms for them to study in,” he said.
For the DepEd to secure adequate funding for wiping out the shortages in a single year or a few years at most, Villafuerte said it will have to lobby Malacañan Palace and the Congress for a higher budget and generate more logistical support from the private sector, especially businesses and organization that support education reform.
Villafuerte said that the DepEd hopes to hit a student-to-teacher ratio of 30 pupils per tutor, but with the current shortages, the current ratio is about one teacher for every 40 students or higher.
Because of the shortages, he said that the DepEd has been conducting two to three shifts of classes or batches of pupils per day, in lieu of the ideal and former setup of one batch of students only for the entire school day.
Citing reports, Villafuerte said that the current shortage in classrooms nationwide is about 165,000, and the teachers’ shortage at 80,000.
For the DepEd to secure adequate funding for wiping out the shortages in a single year or a few years at most, Villafuerte said it will have to lobby Malacañan Palace and the Congress for a higher budget and generate more logistical support from the private sector, especially businesses and organization that support education reform.
Villafuerte said that as a legislator who had served for 14 years combined in the Senate and the House, including as chairman of the Senate finance committee, Angara has the track record to win support for higher funding from lawmakers in both legislative chambers.
Also, with various business groups and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) backing Angara’s DepEd posting, Villafuerte said that the new secretary can capitalize on this goodwill or support to seek for higher aid from the business and NGO communities.
Villafuerte said he is hopeful that Angara will hit the ground running when he assumes office on July 19 and will only need a short learning curve to deal with the major challenges to K12, given his authorship of an array of education reform laws.
He noted that Angara had authored over a dozen education reform laws, including Republic Act (RA) 11997 or the “Kabalikat sa Pagtuturo (Teaching Supplies) Act;” RA 11713 or “Excellence in Teaching Act;” RA 11394 or the “Mandatory Provision of Neutral Desks in Educational Institutions Act;” RA 11314 or the “Student Fare Discount Act;” RA 10665 or the “Open High School System Act;” and RA 11899 or the “Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom II) Act.”
In the PSA 2022 assessment of students, Filipinos ranked 77th out of 81 countries in math, science and reading, performing worse than the global average in these projects.
According to the same PISA assessment, the Philippines ranked 63rd out of 64 countries in terms of students’ creative thinking or evaluation of original ideas.
