Education Secretary Sonny Angara has vowed to reform the Department of Education’s (DepEd) participation in interagency bodies through the Office of the President’s education cluster to address the near doubling of functionally illiterate Filipinos in the past three decades.
This came in response after the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) revealed that the department’s attention has been divided among more than 261 interagency bodies—20 of which it leads and 21 it co-chairs with the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).
In a hearing on the charter and mandates of DepEd, EDCOM emphasized that the 1994 division of the former Department of Education, Culture, and Sports (DECS) into DepEd, CHED, and TESDA was meant to allow DepEd to focus on improving students’ basic literacy and comprehension skills.
“However, 30 years later, despite the restructuring of education agencies, the number of functionally illiterate Filipinos almost doubled to 24.8 million,” it said.
The commission earlier confirmed that the number of functionally illiterate Filipinos has nearly doubled in the past three decades, rising to 24.8 million from 14.5 million in 1993, based on the 2024 Functional Literacy, Education and Mass Media Survey.
For his part, Angara characterized the issue discussed during the Second Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM 2) hearing as ‘coordination spread thin’.
Angara stated that DepEd aims to ensure that every public school will have at least one administrative officer by 2026.
EDCOM 2 Executive Director Karol Mark Yee also noted that the extensive range of responsibilities and additional mandates has compelled teachers to engage in non-teaching tasks, such as health screenings, feeding programs, disaster coordination, and drug education.
“We note also that these added responsibilities have impacted both the agency but also schools, with teachers taking on additional roles, including the implementation of vision screening, for instance, based on RA 11358, as well as coordination of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps) requirements, in light of RA 11310, among others,” he said.
Established in July 2022, EDCOM 2 aims to conduct a comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the Philippine education sector’s performance.
Their goal is to recommend transformative, concrete, and targeted reforms in the sector to enhance the Philippines’ global competitiveness in education and labor markets over the next three years, from 2023 to 2025.
EDCOM 2 is a national commission tasked to undertake a comprehensive national assessment and evaluation of the performance of the Philippine education sector.
