President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has advised incoming Education Secretary Sonny Angara to prioritize the welfare of teachers so they could focus on teaching.

In an interview with reporters on the sidelines of the distribution of government assistance in Sulu on Friday, the Chief Executive said teachers play an important role in the country’s educational system.

“The key to any success in the DepEd (Department of Education) is the teachers. We have to take care of the teachers. Of course, the financial aspect to ensure that they can feed their families is very important,” Marcos said.

The President underscored the importance of recognizing that teachers are not just educators but people with families to support.

He said teachers sometimes cannot focus on teaching if they are preoccupied with their family’s well-being.

“We have to ensure that they’re in a good place so they can concentrate on actual teaching,” Marcos said, adding that he wants to implement other plans for non-financial initiatives to improve the teaching profession.

Angara has said he will review the proposal to raise the starting salary of public school teachers to P50,000 and to improve their benefits.

In addition, Angara said he will enhance the teachers’ working environment by minimizing their non-teaching responsibilities so they could focus on their core duties.

Keeping up with tech

Marcos also noted the need to continually retrain teachers to keep up with the continuing advancements in technology.

“One part of the non-financial aspect is retraining. The rapid development of technology means that within one or two years, skills can become obsolete,” he said.

The President also directed the strengthening of the DepEd feeding program.

“We need to beef up the feeding program because stunting remains a problem among our students. The DepEd has so many aspects to it,” he said.

Improve curriculum, too

In the interview, Marcos said he had asked Angara to improve the K-to-12 curriculum and enhance the teaching of Philippine history.

He said he noticed that some students lacked fundamental skills and the country’s history was not fully covered in the school books.

He suggested adding mini-courses, aside from what is taught in the K to 12 program, noting that the employability of high school graduates had not improved significantly.

“The one thing I asked of (Angara) was to please teach our children Philippine history. I have seen my children’s workbooks and there was very little said about the history of the Philippines. That, for me, is so important for the simple reason that it defines us,” Marcos said.

“We will also simplify the curriculum to make sure everyone understands the basics. And also they can’t do simple math. So what is really needed are the basics. We have to go back to the basics,” he stressed.

He said there should be short courses of at least three months to one year for specific specializations with the help of the private sector.

The second area of focus, according to the President, is improving performance in international objective tests, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) subjects.

“Sometimes, even with educational programs in place, there are still no jobs. We need to ensure that graduates have good prospects and can find employment, ideally directly with industry employers,” he said.

“We are falling behind in STEM subjects, which are in high demand as our world becomes increasingly technical,” he added.