Incoming Education Secretary Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara can’t waste any time. That’s because the country’s public education system is in so dire a crisis it will handily test his limits.
With little more than three weeks before schools open — where the crisis-ridden public education sector will be boiling again — Angara can’t even wait for Vice President Sara Duterte to formally brief him on the Education portfolio.
In fact, some waggish education policy experts say there’s nothing Ms. Duterte can advise Angara on regarding the country’s longstanding learning crisis since Angara has a firmer grasp of the issues than his predecessor ever had.
This, not because Angara happens to be a veteran legislator but because he served as commissioner of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom II).
Edcom II gained public attention last year when it issued a devastating report on the true state of the country’s public education system which is in the grip of a crisis.
The policy wags spoke harshly, however. Outgoing Education Secretary Duterte can still be momentarily useful.
In fact, she needs to take it upon herself to thoroughly brief her successor on the real progress of one notable action she somehow managed to undertake: banning teachers from taking on additional administrative work.
The transition period from teachers carrying the heavy burden of administrative work supposedly ended last March, upon the Department of Education’s (DepEd) hiring of 5,000 personnel solely tasked with doing administrative work.
But there are no official reports on whether or not the teachers have been really freed and can now concentrate fully on their teaching duties in time for the 29 July reopening.
Teaching duties — in light of the education sector’s latest policy shift stating that the crucial task of the teacher is to make schoolchildren “understand the basics” — now require that all overworked and underpaid public school teachers discard their previous teaching methods.
Making schoolchildren “understand the basics,” of course, is undeniably a tacit admission by the Marcos administration of the magnitude of the learning crisis and the serious need for massive reforms. A learning crisis that was graphically illustrated by the World Bank’s (WB) devastating findings recently that over 90 percent of Filipino students “are not able to read and understand age-appropriate text at age 10.”
On other teacher concerns, Angara spoke guardedly on their demand for a salary increase. While he recognized the salary issue, he however made it clear that serious financing obstacles barred the salary issue from even going beyond the talking stage.
Still, Angara has yet to categorically admit the salary issue is interrelated with the DepEd bureaucracy’s skewed priorities on the importance of the teacher.
As matters now stand, as one education policy expert put it, teachers are “valued the least in the DepEd organization. Of the 12 ranks in the DepEd, they rank at the lowest two (Ranks 11 and 12) while their principal is the third lowest (Rank 10). The nine higher ranks are all administrative positions.”
That speaks volumes about why public school teachers are dispirited and why they’re horrified by administrative work — it’s blatant exploitation.
Another daunting issue among other overwhelming education issues with which Angara should be familiar but has to start addressing immediately is the lack of textbooks and other instructional materials which are often riddled with errors.
The DepEd failed, and is still failing, to address Edcom II’s eye-popping revelation last year: “Since 2012, only 27 textbooks have been procured for Grade 1 to Grade 10, despite substantial budget allocations. DepEd’s budget utilization data shows that from 2018 to 2022 alone, a total of P12.6 billion had been allocated to textbooks and other instructional materials, but only P4.5 billion (35.3%) has been obligated and P952 million (7.5%) has been disbursed.”
If the DepEd bureaucracy remains that grossly inefficient and there are no forthcoming massive reforms, we may as well resign ourselves to go on living the nightmare that is the public school system for decades to come.