Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte on Monday, Jan. 30, presented the “current state” of the country’s basic education through the Basic Education Report (BER) 2023.
In the BER 2023, Duterte identified the challenges faced by the Department of Education (DepEd) when it comes to the delivery of basic education among Filipino learners.
Topping the list of challenges that hound the country’s basic education system is school facilities and learning resources. “The lack of school infrastructure and resources to support the ideal teaching process is the most pressing issue pounding the Philippine basic education,” Duterte said.
DepEd, she noted, is “not blind” to the reality that there is a need to build, repair, and maintain school infrastructures to accommodate the growing number of learners in schools nationwide.
Citing the latest enrollment figures, Duterte said that there over 28 million Filipino learners are studying in public schools across the country.
Based on DepEd’s latest inventory, Duterte said that there are 327,851 school buildings in the country but out of this number, “only 104,536 are in good condition.”
Due to various reasons, Duterte noted that 100,072 school buildings need minor repairs; 89,252 require major repairs, and 21,727 are set for condemnation.
Another concern, she added, is that “our schools are not calamity-proof.”
Among the significant roadblocks to the education infrastructure program, Duterte said, are earthquakes, typhoons, landslides, flooding, and even armed conflicts.
Duterte also cited challenges in procurement practices which “showed cracks that, if left unresolved, will harm our vision to providing our learners with quality basic education.”
These procurement practices, she said, also “illuminated the concern for transparency and accountability.”
Duterte also pointed out concerns about enrollment and learner school data.
“As we confront the dilemma in school infrastructure and learning resources, we looked at the trends in our enrollment and learner data during the pandemic and now, we are implementing post-pandemic programs and reforms,” Duterte said.
While the recovery in enrollment is seen in public schools, Duterte noted the decline of enrollment figures in private schools.
“Eventually, saw some private schools terminating their operations,” she said, noting that from 2020 to 2022, more than 1,600 private schools stopped operations.
With a “wide disparity” between the number of elementary and secondary schools in the country, Duterte noted that inclusivity in education “remains to be a concern” in the country’s basic education system.
Other challenges faced by DepEd, she said, are those related to curriculum and employability.
Citing the latest data from the ongoing K to 12 review, Duterte said that the curriculum content is congested and some prerequisites of identified essential learning competencies are missing or misplaced.
Duterte also noted that a significant number of learning competencies “cater to high cognitive demands.”
Citing the assessment on the K to 12 curriculum, Duterte stressed the “weak teaching methods of our teachers in addressing 21st-century skills.”
To address this, Duterte underscored the urgent need for teachers to “return to our classrooms and they must teach.” This, she said, will only be made possible if “backbreaking and time-consuming administrative tasks” are lifted off their shoulders.
Lastly, Duterte identified learning outcomes as among the challenges that hound the country’s basic education system.
“Another alarming issue that we must address appropriately and effectively is literacy,” she said.
Citing results of the 2018 Programme for International Students Assessment (PISA), learning outcomes among Filipino learners are “distressing” and “alarming.”
The study results showed 81 percent of participating Filipino learners could not deal with basic math problems, 81 percent had trouble understanding texts of moderate length, and 78 percent could not recognize correct explanations for scientific phenomena / or draw valid conclusions from given data.
“The current state of basic education behooves us all to take a courageous stand and calls us to work together with the intention and commitment to resolve the challenges in basic education,” Duterte stressed.