President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has emphasized that the key to improving the quality of education lies in supporting public school teachers — calling them the “hardest working public servants” in government.

In the second part of the latest episode of his official podcast, Marcos tackled long-standing issues in the education sector, including the relevance of the K-12 curriculum, classroom shortages, and the need for teacher upskilling and retraining.

The President reiterated his earlier directive to the Department of Education (DepEd) to rationalize the K-12 program, citing concerns about employability and skills mismatch among graduates. He acknowledged growing calls from lawmakers to either revise or abolish the program, which added two years of senior high school to the country’s education system.

“It is just expressing the same frustration that I expressed in the first place. Because it is costing more for the parents because two years are being added to the student’s education. They pay for tuition, school supplies, books and everything. In 10 years, there is no advantage. Graduates are still unemployable,” Marcos said.

Implemented in 2012, the K-12 program was meant to align the Philippine education system with international standards. However, President Marcos said that while he would leave the issue up to Congress, he has tasked DepEd to improve the curriculum and address its gaps in the meantime.

Marcos identified improving education quality as a top priority of his administration. He pointed out a classroom backlog of around 160,000 and the continued use of “Marcos-type” classrooms — structures built during his father’s administration that were only meant to last 20 to 30 years.

“Education has really been neglected. That's what happened. There was no effort to help education,” he said. “So our grades – our ratings, especially STEM subjects, are going down. Then there are those who can't read.”

To address the classroom backlogs, Marcos said the government has entered into a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP).

“We have entered into a program to rebuild and to build more school buildings. We made it into PPP because if the government acts alone, we can only build a few,” he said. 

“But again, in fairness to the private sector, they are very cooperative. They release money and are very willing to help,” he added.

The President also ordered a reduction in teachers’ administrative workloads, hiring support staff to allow teachers to focus on classroom duties. He has directed DepEd to implement retraining programs to keep educators updated on evolving teaching tools and technologies.

Marcos criticized the current teacher performance audit system, which he said can be misleading and encourages grade inflation.

“There's another problem, there is a performance audit at the end of the year for teachers. And when they say that half of your class has failed, you are a weak teacher. Your performance audit is low,” he said.

“If 90 percent of the class is passed, then the teacher must be really good. So, even if the student doesn't know how to read, they pass. That’s what is happening. Just a practical thing. But we should –  we will remedy that,” he added.

He assured teachers of the administration’s full support: “We will help you as much as possible so that our young people, whom we all love, can be good, smart, and knowledgeable.”