THE Department of Education said it fully supports efforts to reinstitute the mandatory Reserve Officer Training Corps program for senior high school students but stressed the need to first sit down with Congress to discuss the matter.
“I discussed it with the Vice President and DepEd is in full support of that measure because it adheres to our core values of being makabansa,” DepEd spokesperson Michael Tan Poa said in a press briefing yesterday.
“We need to sit down with Congress and CHED (Commission on Higher Education) to discuss the details. Right now, we don’t know the finer details of the proposal,” he added.
In his first State of the Nation Address last Monday, President Marcos Jr. pushed for the revival of the mandatory ROTC program for senior high school students, saying it is one of the priority measures of his administration.
Mandatory ROTC was scrapped in 2002 after the enactment of Republic Act 9163, or the act establishing the National Service Training Program. The ROTC program was scrapped after the March 2001 killing of University of Sto. Tomas student Mark Wilson Chua, allegedly by his ROTC handlers, after he exposed corruption in the program.
Several officials, including Vice President and concurrent DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte Carpio, have pushed for the return of mandatory ROTC.
The National Youth Commission has also urged Malacanang to issue an executive order making the ROTC program mandatory.
Poa said the more pressing issue the DepEd is focusing on is on the opening of classes next month and the resumption of in-person classes by November.
“It is difficult to comment on it right now because we don’t know how it will be implemented. There is no concrete proposal yet. Our focus now is the planned implementation of face-to-face classes,” Poa explained.
Several groups, including Kabataan and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers, have opposed the return of mandatory ROTC, saying DepEd should instead focus its time and resources on upgrading the quality of basic education in the country.
