News of the naming of top-level specialists who will be conducting extensive studies on specific priority areas identified by the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) last Tuesday is both more than welcome and timely amid the urgent need for critical transformative change in Philippine education.

The specialists will assist EDCOM 2 in undertaking a comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the country's education performance.

EDCOM 2 is a creation of five senators led by Senator Edgardo "Sonny" Angara, who filed Senate Joint Resolution No. 10 in January 2020 primarily to review, assess, and evaluate Philippine education at all levels. The first EDCOM was actually the brainchild of Sonny Angara's father, former UP president and the late Senate president Edgardo J. Angara back in 1990.

EDCOM 1 then came out with a report that paved the way for implementing education reform in the country. After over three decades, the challenges in the education sector have not only remained unaddressed but have become even more critical.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the country was already facing a significant learning crisis. Statistics show nine out of 10 children aged ten cannot read simple texts.

Equitable access to quality education remains elusive throughout the years of formal education. While 82.4 percent of Filipinos aged 25 and over in 2019 reported completing primary education, the completion rate for secondary education significantly dropped to 30.5 percent, while the completion rate for a Bachelor's degree or an equivalent degree decreased even further to 24.4 percent.

The non-profit Philippine Business for Education's State of Philippine Education Report 2023 points out that while the enrollment rate in Philippine higher education is on par with middle-income countries' average, this, however, is rapidly eroding as neighboring countries continue to rise while the Philippines' enrollment rate has stagnated.

In the 2018 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA, an international assessment measuring 15-year-old students' reading, math, and science literacy every three years), the Philippines ranked last among 79 countries and economies in reading and second to last in science and mathematics.

At least 78 percent of students in the country failed to reach minimum proficiency levels in PISA subjects (reading, science, math).

The onset of the Covid-19 pandemic caught the Philippine education system off guard, exacerbating even more the existing challenges. Lockdown measures enforced in 2020 further widened the cracks in the education system, resulting in a greater number of students being left behind and an increased growth in the learning gap across all educational levels.

The closure of schools and the transition to blended learning by the DepEd in 2020 left over a million students unable to enroll. Despite efforts to provide students with learning options, parents reported that their children needed to learn more adequately due to limited resources, poor learning environments, and an insufficient teaching workforce to accommodate the growing number of students in public schools.

Those, and many other problems besetting the sector, are what primarily moved Senator Sonny Angara, along with his then colleagues in the Senate — former Senate minority floor leader Franklin Drilon, Grace Poe, Sherwin Gatchalian and Joel Villanueva — to co-author the resolution creating EDCOM 2 and the re-launch and awarding of the UP President Edgardo J. Angara (UPPEJA) Fellowship awards to distinguished top-notch policy researchers.

A large part of the Fellows' work will be writing aforesaid research studies on areas pinpointed by EDCOM 2 as a priority.

The committee has set its sights on 28 priority areas to guide its assessment and development of policy reforms in early childhood care and development, basic education, higher education, teacher education and development, technical and vocational education and training, and education governance and finance.

More than any other matter that urgently needs to be focused on, one primordial fact that stares us in the face is this: today's country is in a learning crisis. Per the World Bank, 90 percent of Filipino students cannot read and understand age-appropriate text at ten years old. The country is at the bottom of standardized assessments such as PISA and Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study.

The time to move and set students on the right path is now.