THE RESULTS of the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) — the comparative survey conducted by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the academic performance, skills, and knowledge of 15-year-old students across countries — were released last December.
These findings underscored the sorry state of our education system. For the second time, we ranked among the lowest in the world. Out of 81 countries surveyed, we placed 77th, which puts us at the 2nd lowest position among ASEAN countries, ahead only of Cambodia. Furthermore, our students were 6th from the bottom for reading and mathematics, and 3rd when it came to skills in science. Some of these represent slight improvements from our previous rankings in the 2018 PISA, but they are still not statistically significant enough to indicate that something changed in the intervening years.
To be fair, the Department of Education (DepEd) released a statement almost a month before the results were published saying that they did not expect “good” scores. This is understandable considering the nearly mortal blow the COVID-19 pandemic had caused on the education of our children. And it explains why concerted efforts were underway to implement a national learning recovery program.
While the 2022 PISA results do put into more concrete terms the magnitude of the problems in our education system, many from the sector were hardly surprised about data underscoring that there was a learner’s crisis already brewing throughout the country. Many have also tried before to get to the bottom of the crisis in the hopes of finding solutions.
The convening of the Second Congressional Commission on Education or EDCOM 2 in January 2023 marked a renewed attempt at facing head on the problems of Philippine education. A year since, and a little more than a month after the 2022 PISA results were published, EDCOM 2 published its first year report, entitled Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education.
Where several international studies provided empirical evidence on how much our students are falling behind their peers, the Year 1 report of EDCOM 2 is perhaps the most detailed and concrete analysis in recent years of why Philippine education continues to languish.
To quote from the actual report, the basic diagnosis is that the system as a whole is not working well. Where a system is defined as “a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole,” the Philippines’ education system “struggles to meet [this] criteria” considering that “agencies, bureaus, and offices have focused on their respective mandates and targets, often independent of one another.” Ultimately, this lack of cohesion and coherence across the different components of our education sector underscores the “miseducation” of our students, and explains the crisis many are working to resolve today.
The findings are eye-opening. For one, despite efforts at implementing nutrition-based interventions, the Philippines still has one of the highest prevalence of under-five stunting in the world, at 26.7% compared to the global average of 22.3%.
Another significant discovery was that despite substantial budget allocations, only 27 textbook titles were procured for Kindergarten to Grade 10 since 2012. Even though up to P12.6 billion were allocated between 2018 to 2022 for textbooks and instructional materials, only P4.5 billion (35.3%) has been obligated and P952 million (7.5%) has actually been disbursed. One infographic based on DepEd data even highlighted that there has been no successful procurement of textbooks for Grades 1, 2, 3, and 7 from 2012 to 2023. And it was only in Grades 5 and 6 that textbooks for all nine subjects were successfully purchased.
As Chairperson of the Governance and Finance Standing Committee of EDCOM 2, we took note that the staffing levels in the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) have not kept pace with the fast-evolving responsibilities of the agencies.
We also noted the report’s findings that while investments and support for education have increased in recent years, current levels of maintenance and other operating expenses (MOOE) budgets are still insufficient to cover the costs of running public elementary and high schools. Through the EDCOM 2’s consultations with school heads, we learned that 30 to 70% of their MOOE budgets is spent on utility bills alone.
Steps are already underway to address some of the problems identified. In her Basic Education Report 2024, Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte outlined the many initiatives that the DepEd have been implementing, including the implementation of the revised K-10 MATATAG Curriculum, and the easing of the administrative work load currently heaped on teachers, among several others.
For our part, in the Senate, as Chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, we ensured that funding is in place in 2024 to already address some of the problems the EDCOM 2 has identified, even prior to the release of their year-end report. These include funds for assisting nutritionally at-risk mothers, the hiring of more assessors in TESDA, and training for child development workers and teachers.
The problems described by the report’s findings are significant and sizable. They are in no way insurmountable however, especially when the public and private sector tackle them in collaboration with each other. Clearly all must work, and must work together.
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Sen. Sonny Angara has been in public service for 19 years—9 years as Representative of the Lone District of Aurora, and 10 as Senator. He has authored, co-authored, and sponsored more than 330 laws. He is currently serving his second term in the Senate.
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Email: sensonnyangara@yahoo.com| Facebook, Twitter & Instagram: @sonnyangara/PN
