President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. underscored the critical need for increased support for public school teachers, calling them the “hardest working public servants” in government.
His remarks came during the second part of his recent podcast episode, where he discussed his administration’s plans to improve the quality of education in the Philippines.
Marcos addressed the ongoing debate surrounding the K-12 curriculum, which he ordered the Department of Education (DepEd) to rationalize last year due to concerns about graduate employability and skills mismatches.
While Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Win Gatchalian hold opposing views — as Estrada seeking to abolish the curriculum and Gatchalian advocating for its retention — Marcos indicated he would defer to Congress on the issue.
“It is just expressing the same frustration that I expressed in the first place,” Marcos said, referring to public discontent. “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.”
The K-12 program, implemented in 2012, extended the traditional 10-year education system to 13 years, including a year of kindergarten and two years of senior high school, aiming to enhance global competitiveness.
Despite the legislative uncertainty, the President has directed Education Secretary Angara to improve the current school curriculum. Marcos also cited that the private sector has offered to provide training and employment opportunities for K-12 graduates.
Improving education quality remains a top priority for the Marcos administration. One key task assigned to DepEd is the construction of additional classrooms. The President highlighted a backlog of 160,000 classrooms, noting that some “Marcos-type classrooms” designed for a 20- to 30-year lifespan are still in use today.
“Education has really been neglected. That’s what happened. There was no effort to help education,” said the President, lamenting declining performance, particularly in STEM subjects, and issues with student literacy.
To tackle the classroom shortage, the government has initiated a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) program.
“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,” Marcos said, as he commended the private sector for its cooperation and willingness to contribute financially.
The President also stressed the need to support public school teachers to help them focus on their core duty of educating students as he has ordered a reduction in their administrative duties, with the hiring of additional personnel to handle such tasks.
Additionally, he directed DepEd to implement retraining and re-education programs for teachers, adapting to new modalities and technologies.
Marcos also acknowledged issues with teacher performance reviews, noting that evaluations often reflect student pass rates rather than actual learning.
“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,” said Marcos.
“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.
Marcos stressed that performance reviews should be based on students’ actual test results and assured continuous government support for teachers to enhance student performance.
“We will help you as much as possible so that our young people, whom we all love, can be good, smart, and knowledgeable,” said the President.
