THE Department of Education is set to present today, Monday, the Basic Education Report 2023 that will tackle the current state and challenges facing basic education in the country.
DepEd spokesperson Michael Tan Poa said Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte will also present the priority programs and solutions of the department to address these challenges.
“We will present to the general public what really is the current state of our education since we always heard of the many challenges to basic education. So, we will enumerate all the specific challenges in basic education to the public,” Poa said.
Poa said the report will also present the plans and initiatives needed to address these challenges.
He added the report will also dwell on such issues as problems with the number of school buildings and facilities, literacy gap, including the learning poverty report previously issued by the World Bank, as well as problems with the basic education curriculum.
“These are the things that we are aware of and a lot more that we will be presenting in the Basic Education Report, “ he added.
Poa said DepEd’s report will also include a call to action for every Filipino.
“It’s really to give the public an idea of the steps that this administration will take and also the direction of this administration towards resolving issues in basic education,” he added.
Last year, DepEd Undersecretary Epimaco Densing III said Duterte made it clear to them that there is a “crisis situation” in Philippine education.
Densing made the frank acknowledgement when Sen. Loren Legarda asked during a budget hearing what steps the department is taking to address the challenges, including the students’ reading literacy.
Legarda, the Senate Pro Tempore, cited the results of the 2019 Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa), where the Philippines landed last among 79 nations in reading comprehension and second-lowest in both mathematical and scientific literacy.
Duterte earlier told Congress she would be able to address all the ills plaguing the basic education sector if lawmakers would give the DepEd an additional P100 billion on top of the proposed P710 billion allocation for 2023.
