For the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), responding and adapting to the changes brought by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) are among the challenges that confront the country’s higher education system to date.
“The biggest challenge right now is COVID-19 and it is going to be here for some time,” CHED Chairman Popoy De Vera said during the “Revisiting the EDCOM of 1991: Continuities and Discontinuities in Philippine Education Sector Reform” public forum on Aug. 13.
“I think what COVID-19 has exposed is the fact that a lot of the things that we did not do, which we should have done in the past, are the things that hounded us during COVID-19,” he added.
In particular, De Vera noted that many higher education institutions (HEIs) were caught off guard when schools have to be shut down at all education levels due to the threat of COVID-19.
“COVID-19 is the biggest challenge right now that we are adapting to,” De Vera explained.
Since March 2020, schools in the Philippines - from pre-school, elementary, high school and tertiary levels - have been ordered by the government not to hold face-to-face classes due to the pandemic until now.
“We have not invested as much is technology, we have not invested as much in technology-mediated learning in higher education, we have not improved and expanded distance education as a learning approach and a system and so when COVID-19 hit us, we were less prepared than similarly situated universities and countries are,” De Vera said.
For the past seven months, De Vera said he has been going around all the regions in the country even at the height of the pandemic.
“I know what is happening on the ground,” De Vera said. “I have a pretty good feel of what the challenges are at the ground level,” he added.
The public forum looked back at the 1991 Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM) Report.
It also featured the findings of the 1991 EDCOM through a study commissioned by the Department of Education (DepEd) led by Prof. Alex B. Brillantes, Jr., Ph.D. who is the former dean at the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance (UPNCPAG).
De Vera was among education executives who participated in the virtual roundtable discussion on the findings of the Education Commission Report of 1991 along with DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Planning Office Executive Director Rosalina Constantino.
The forum was also attended virtually by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, Pasig City Congressman Roman Romulo, Social Watch Philippines Co-Convenor Rene Raya, and Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) Policy Advocacy Manager Marco De Los Reyes as reactors.