With the quality of education in the country once again put on the spotlight, the proposals to bring back a unified structural arrangement in the education system have come to light.
The issue trifocalization was among the topics discussed by education executives of the Department of Education (DepEd), Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) during a public forum on the Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM) of 1991 held Aug. 13.
In the Philippines, trifocalization of education pertains to assigning three different agencies to oversee major educational systems: DepEd for basic education, CHED for higher education and the TESDA for technical and vocational education training (TVET).
“Trifocalization was implemented at the time when a very really good number of countries were also going into trifocalizing or dividing up various aspects of education,” DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones said.
Briones noted that trifocalization has become a sensitive topic that people do not want to mess around with because it was a “painful and messy process” in the first place.
“I will not comment on the case of the Philippines because the thinking is that it's already a ‘done deal’ but we trifocalized at the time when a good number of countries in Asia where into trifocalization or dividing themselves up in two and now they are back as one,” Briones said.
Briones noted that very important countries in South East Asia (SEA) such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand were among those divided up their education systems.
“But what is the situation at present? A good number of those who went in to trifocalization are back to unity structural arrangements,” she added.
Out of 10 SEA countries, Briones said that seven of them currently have unified structures.
For CHED Chairman Popoy De Vera, the matter of trifocalization is a “very valid area to consider.” In 1991, De Vera said that trifocalization might have been a good idea because of the perception then that the “educational bureaucracy was big, cumbersome, and it was subject to governance challenges - therefore the answer was to trifocalized it.”
De Vera also shared the observation of Briones that the many of the ASEAN countries are not trifocalized now.
However, De Vera also reminded that trifocalization was one of the “most difficult challenges in implementing” the 1991 EDCOM Report --- noting how “politically difficult” it was to create CHED and TESDA in 1994.
“While it is a valid issued for think about putting them together, I think it will be messy, it will be politically contentious and maybe our energies are better put on other more importantly issues in educational reform than trying to put back agencies together,” De Vera said.
De Vera said that while reconsidering trifocalization is a “good area” to discuss and study, “putting it back together is something else --- it is going to be difficult.”
TESDA Planning Office Executive Director Rosalina Constantino, meanwhile, agreed with that the energies and resources may be better spent to address more important concerns in education at present.