Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon on Monday urged his colleagues to immediately pass a bill establishing an educational commission in the Philippines to address the serious problems hounding the country’s educational system, such as funding and lack of classrooms.

Drilon said there is a necessity for the Senate and House leadership to immediately constitute a body—through an educational commission—in order to provide more long-term solutions.

“Let us have a roadmap, agreed upon by the Executive and Legislature, in order to provide a solution to this problem, rather than every budget time, we debate on how much would be given to education,” Drilon said during the marathon session on the proposed 2022 budget of the Department of Education (DepEd).

“There must be a plan to address this very serious concern in the education sector,” he stressed.

Drilon said he is alarmed over a recent study of the World Bank (WB) that showed that most kids aged 10 in the country cannot read. The WB study also said that school children in the Philippines strugged with studying remotely due to the pandemic which pushed learning poverty to a new high of 90 percent in 2020.

Reading from the WorldBank report, Drilon noted that Indonesia has 35.4 percent; Malaysia, 13.9 percent; Singapore, 2.8 percent; Thailand, 23.5 percent; and Vietnam, 1.7 percent. In contrast, he said the Philippines is joining the ranks of Ethiopia, Madagascars, Yemen, Afghanistan at the bottom.

“I am so sad that this is happening to us...We beat everybody in this unwelcome data: 9 out of 10 aged 10 would not know how to read,” the senator lamented.

“It is quite alarming. This affects the ability of our future generation to be useful citizens of our country. That should worry our education sector. That should worry the administration. We should give more funds to the education sector,” Drilon said.

In response, Sen. Pia Cayetano, who is defending the DepEd’s budget, said the agency is already finalizing its Development Plan 2030, which is aligned with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and is meant to provide strategic direction in addressing the impact of COVID-19 and the concerns on learning.

Nevertheless, Drilon said he would support the original budget proposal of DepEd which is at P1.3-trillion, as he criticized the lack of priority being given to the education sector.

Under the proposed budget of the DepEd for next year, the agency stands to receive P590.19-billion.

“Kahit ano pang gawin natin, kung ang education sector ay hindi po nabibigyan ng sapat na suporta dahilan sa mga priority na nandiyan sa budget (whatever we do, if our education sector is not given sufficient financial support due to the other priorities in the budget). No amount of adjustments of the budget of the DepEd in the Senate will solve the problem...” Drilon said.

“The education sector suffers in terms of priority as against, for example, the security sector. It is quite unfortunate,” the veteran lawmaker stressed.