Vice President Leni Robredo on Sunday called on the Duterte administration to address the alarming state of Philippine education that has worsened due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
During her weekly radio show, Robredo reacted to a World Bank report citing 80 percent of the Filipino schoolchildren fell below minimum proficiency levels.
“For me, if there is data such as these, I am expecting a reaction that we should be eager to fix things. We must use this challenge to fix the system to avoid a repeat of such data,” she said.
The country must declare an education crisis, she noted.
“The slower our reaction is, the worse the problem will be. Rather than be defensive, let us find ways,” she said.
"In fairness, the Department of Education has been saying they have done a lot, but these were not reflected in the World Bank study so I hope there could be an update of the data,” she added.
She lamented that the situation was "exacerbated" because children could not go to schools amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the House, Cebu Rep. Eduardo Gullas said Congress must earmark billions of pesos in fresh funding to retool public school teachers in English, mathematics, and science in the years ahead amid the deteriorating performance of Filipino students in global assessments.
“We are convinced that English, math and science are not being taught effectively in our public school system,” he said.
“Right now, we are spending only P723 per head annually for the continuing education of our teachers through formal in-service training. This is a ridiculously low amount,” he added.
In this year’s General Appropriations Act, he said the Department of Education is getting only P675 million “for the in-service training and other learning and development interventions to upgrade the competence of public school teachers.”
“We should be investing anywhere from P5,000 to P10,000 per head every year to develop the knowledge and skills of our teachers, particularly in English, math, and science, through seminars and workshops,” he noted.
In 2020, DepEd had a budget of only P780 million for the same purpose.
"We have to invest more aggressively in the professional development of our teachers to continuously improve their performance on the job and to motivate them,” Gullas said.
He called on DepEd to work more closely with teacher training institutions at the University of the Philippines, Philippine Normal University and Development Academy of the Philippines.
Based on the staffing summary in the 2021 national budget, DepEd now has 932,740 employees, most of whom are classroom teachers.
Most Filipino students “do not know what they should know” in school, according to a recent World Bank report.
It said that poor learning outcomes were observed among Filipino students with over 80 percent of them falling below minimum levels of expected proficiency.
The report was based on the performance of Filipino students in the Program for International Student Assessment in 2018, Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study in 2019, and Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics also in 2019.