The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT),which is linked to the militant Makabayan bloc in the House of Representatives, criticized and taunted Vice President Sara Duterte in a thorny statement Thursday, March 30, going as far to call her a "fake" education leader.

"The [ACT] Philippines, with its 180,000 members nationwide, including our five regional accredited unions of public school teachers holding the sole and exclusive negotiating agent status and 10 more duly registered regional public school teacher unions, stand by the ACT Teachers Party-list being the genuine voice of teachers in Congress, with our true representative, [Rep]. France Castro," the group said in a statement sent to House reporters Thursday afternoon, March 30.

"ACT Teachers Partylist is a true representative of teachers, Duterte is the fake education leader," read the title of the group's statement.

Vice President Duterte is the concurrent Department of Education (DepEd) secretary.

Duterte has long been at odds with the Makabayan, which she claims to have ties with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA). The Philippines considers the CPP-NPA a terrorist organization.

"It is Sara Duterte’s authenticity and legitimacy as an education leader that is highly questionable," ACT Philippines said.

"Eight months in office and she has not satisfactorily addressed any single problem in the education sector, nor (sic) fulfilled any of her promises. No teaching overload pay, no respite from non-teaching duties, no timely and ample benefits," it claimed.

"She has contradicted the clamour of our teachers from the ground for salary increase, building more classrooms and hiring more teachers...she is wasting her mandate to her mad crusade to attack ACT Philippines and ACT Teachers Party-list," it added.

Sarcastically, ACT Philippines said the vice president is better appointed as the Department of National Defense (DND) head or the spokesperson for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) instead of education chief.

This is because of her "penchant for red-tagging and her militaristic style of leadership", it said.

"She has already squandered too much time and energy on her trash-talk, it is high time that we see her act on the problems of teachers and the education sector," ACT Philippines said.