Even before accepting the offer to become Education Secretary, Vice President Sara Duterte said she “knew the enormity of the challenges” that awaits her once she leads the government’s biggest bureaucracy --- the Department of Education (DepED).
“I was not blind to the never-ending list of problems of our learners, schools, our teachers, and our principals,” Duterte said on Friday, Nov. 18, during the International Education Conference of Philippine Normal University (PNU) and Commission on Higher Education (CHED) where she served as a guest speaker.
Before being elected as Vice President, Duterte was the mayor of Davao City where she served as the head of the Local School Board. “As the local chief executive and head of the Local School Board, I knew the urgency of resolving the problems,” she added.
Duterte then noted that having an available budget or the lack of it is an “essential factor in the failure or success of our efforts to address the problem of learning loss or sustain our gains or carry out reforms at DepEd.”
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Duterte said that the World Bank published a report calling attention to the “alarming learning poverty” in the Philippines.
The Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics in 2019 also revealed “an alarming report on the difficulty” of Filipino children in reading and math where the Philippines ranked last in reading and math among 79 countries based on the 2018 results for the secondary level from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).
Given this, Duterte recognized the “great contributions” of partners such as the Philippine Normal University (PNU) to the country’s basic education system.
“As education leaders, I know everyone here braced themselves for the impact, and maybe uttered a prayer or two, for the sake of our learners,” Duterte said.
Duterte noted that PNU, in partnership with the CHED, helped the DepED develop the Senior High (SHS) School curriculum by producing teaching guides for core, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics or STEM and Accountancy, Business and Management, or ABM subjects.
Meanwhile, Duterte admitted that there is still “much room for improvement” --- specifically in helping teachers sharpen their skills in contextualization to address the concerns of diverse learners.
Teachers, she added, also need help in strengthening instructional leadership and supervision to improve teaching quality with system-wide capacity development.
She then lauded the PNU for the “compendious work” on their approach to providing accessible and quality training for teachers through their Research Center for Teacher Quality (RCTQ) program.
Duterte also enjoined education stakeholders present at the conference to “unite and collaborate” to ensure that the country’s future workforce will be skilled, equipped, and productive.
“I look forward to reading the recovery roadmap you will produce after this conference and I am excited to work with you in the next six years as we usher in meaningful basic education reforms,” Duterte said.