Senator Joel Villanueva is urging closer collaboration among agencies involved in education so that the government “will have a stronger and unified approach in addressing an education crisis worsened by the pandemic”.
As tests and studies reveal the deterioration of the quality of graduates across levels, Villanueva said the Department of Education, Commission on Higher Education, and the Technical Educational and Skills Development Administration “should come up with one strategy on how to improve education”.
“DepEd, TESDA and CHED should work like three campuses of one school and not as three separate schools independent of each other.”
The veteran legislator said DepEd, TESDA and CHED should work “like three campuses of one school and not as three separate schools independent of each other”.
“They were never meant to be three independent republics,” the seasoned lawmaker stressed.
The senator lamented that the dilution of “the collaborative governance regime,” which assigns to the three agencies the role of each “in developing the nation’s human capital”.
While we have a ‘trifocalized’ setup in the education sector, “it doesn’t mean that they’ll be operating like three classrooms with a firewall separating each,” he said.
“Education should be on the same page so that policies will not be fragmented.”
Villanueva stressed the need for “education to be on the same page, so that policies will not be fragmented and for three agencies, and their mandates, to be seamlessly connected”.
He made the call as the Senate committee on higher education, which he chairs, began hearing Senate Bill No. 1744 which seeks to amend the charter of CHED.
Villanueva said CHED’s mandates have evolved through the years, with new ones, like the Free Tuition Law, imposed by Congress.
But amending the CHED’s charter, he pointed out, should go hand in hand with other education reforms, “which is one unfinished work”.
Among the efforts to reform the country’s education system includes conducting a comprehensive study under a congressional oversight committee which Villanueva is pushing with four other senators.
“While we strengthen each education agency, we must see to it that cooperation remains the cornerstone of trifocalized education,” he concluded.
