THE UPGRADE OF EDUCATION

June 28, 2025 Opinion

The 1987 Philippine Constitution provides in Article XIV that it is the State’s responsibility and obligation to protect and promote the right to quality education at all levels. More specifically the law provides that it is the right of all citizens to be provided with quality education and that the State shall take appropriate steps to make education accessible to all. Note the imperative directive of the law when it uses the word ‘shall’ which practically makes it the primary burden of the government to insure that all Filipino citizens are provided with the opportunity of having quality education.

For several decades now the Philippines has boasted a high level of literacy among its citizens. In fact a report in 2019 cited the United Nations as declaring that the Philippines has the highest literacy rate at 97.95% compared to other Southeast Asian countries such as Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia, with literacy rate among females pegged at 98.9% and 97% among males aged 15-24. But those statistics were several years ago and with the advent of new technologies and way of doing things it is already observed that there are widening gaps in literacy education especially among children.

Education Secretary Sonny Angara issued the frank admission that more must be done to address deficiencies they have discovered in the education sector, such as the persistent classroom backlog and shortage pegged at 165,000 classrooms. The education secretary gave his commitment to fast track reforms in order to address longstanding concerns and problems in basic education. This includes classroom congestion, mental health, access to facilities, disruptions to learning (e.g typhoons and floods), infrastructure upgrades, electrification, and additional community learning centers.

In terms of the quality of education this current administration plans to include the putting up of more than 15,000 additional classrooms by 2027, the hiring of more teachers and counselors, and the enhancement of the school based feeding program for all kindergarten learners. This are indeed very serious steps to be taken but one that will surely insure top-notched quality education for our learners. To add to all of these plans and promises perhaps the education secretary should also take a closer look and scrutinize the method of procurement for education materials in public schools and to make changes in how these reading materials and reference books are acquired by government educational institutions.

We already know that in the procurement process allowed by government rules and procedures there must be a bidding undertaken with the most responsive bid being declared as the winner for the contract to supply these educational materials. However, we also know that one of the most important factors in winning a government contract is by submitting the lowest bid, since it is well established that the government will always protect the peoples money by making sure that it is well spent. But here lies the problem because by lowering one’s bid to win a contract or project oftentimes the quality of the deliverable suffers.

May be this time since the national budget allocates the biggest money to education as mandated by law, then educational materials should undergo a different procurement process that will guarantee that they are of the highest quality when acquired and purchased. So the winning bidder must not be the one that can offer the lowest bid but the one who can provide the highest quality of education materials for the learners. Another reform that can be instituted is to insure that all public teachers are given the opportunity to widen their academic education and expertise.

There must be a deliberate action on the part of the Department of Education to institutionalize the enhancement of the learning capabilities of teachers not only in the area of their professional work to educate but also in the area of leadership and management. With the hundreds of millions of pesos available to the Dep-Ed it should be able to send teachers to worthwhile and vetted seminars and workshops that add to their knowledge of not only how to teach but also on how to lead and manage their wards. As a final suggestion, teachers in public schools should not be made to handle only one specific class of a certain grade but also be capable of teaching and handling other classes in other grades as an avenue to widen their educational horizon.