VICE President and concurrent Education Secretary Sara Duterte yesterday called for “bayanihan” (community spirit) and greater urgency in addressing learning gaps in basic education.
Duterte made the call when she spoke to the delegates of the Southeast Asian Education Ministers for the 52nd SEAMEO Council Conference Mandaluyong City.
Duterte said there is no more pressing time than now to address challenges in basic education and ensure equality, especially since the region is still grappling with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We need to act now. We cannot afford to waste more time. As education leaders, we cannot allow a single child to miss out on the opportunity and benefits of learning and the wonders of being able to use it positively,” Duterte said.
“As education leaders, we have a huge responsibility. The decisions we make today will determine the quality of life in our countries and the entire Asean Region, and the ripple effect in these decisions can reverberate for generations to come,” she added.
She called on all Asean education ministers to embrace “bayanihan”, urging the members of the council to address the pressing issues of equitable access to education and the post-recovery from the pandemic.
She also presented the MATATAG Agenda of the Department of Education under the Marcos administration, highlighting the commitment of the agency to improve the quality of basic education in the Philippines.
Duterte said the pandemic has unraveled some of the weakest areas of the region’s education system.
“It has worsened education inequality, with younger, vulnerable and disadvantaged children among the most affected,” she said.
“In addition, learning poverty, or the inability to read and comprehend a basic text by the age of 10 has gotten worse because of the disruption in schooling and is currently thought to be close to 70 percent,” she added.
Duterte said this should spur more urgency in how governments in the region will address such challenges.
“In all of these, one thing is clear. We need to act now. We cannot afford to waste more time. As education leaders, we cannot allow Asean children to miss out on the beauty and benefits of learning and the wonders of being able to use it to positively impact Asean and the world,” she said.
Last month, Duterte presented the DepEd’s Basic Education Report (BER) 2023 where she enumerated the many ills plaguing the country’s basic education sector, saying that school facilities is among the major challenges facing the department, along with a “congested curriculum” and the promise of the K to 12 curriculum that remains a promise to this day.
“The lack of school infrastructure and resources to support the ideal teaching process is the most pressing issue hounding the Philippine basic education,” Duterte said in presenting the BER report.
“The department is not blind to the reality that there is a need to build, repair and maintain school infrastructures to accommodate the growing number of learners all over the Philippines,” she added.
She said all is not lost as the DepEd had started implementing the National Recovery Plan that started with the return of 28.4 million students to school after two years of blended and online learning due to the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with learning remediation and intervention programs.
She also vowed to upgrade teachers’ training and to build more resilient classrooms equipped with modern ICT tools.
