Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte-Carpio on Thursday said the country must avert further deterioration of the Philippine education system to save the future of the children and the country in general.
The Vice President made the statement in remarks at the 45th annual and 22nd Mindanao-wide convention of the Association of Registrars of Schools, Colleges’ Universities- Technical Vocational Training Institution (ARSCU-TVTI) held in Davao City.
She said if people in authority and responsibility give even half of their efforts in training young learners, the country will continue to harvest Filipino children who are struggling in the field of education.
Multiple studies and fact-finding missions on the Philippine education system showed that the deteriorating quality of education is due to the low government budget for education; poor quality of teachers; poor management of schools; poor school facilities such as laboratories and library facilities; poor learning environment; the content of the curriculum; inadequate books and science equipment; the poor method of instruction; shortages of classrooms.
In a 2018 study conducted by the Programme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) showed that among 79 participating countries and economies, the Philippines scored the lowest in reading comprehension.
Reading was the main subject assessed among 15-year-old students in the 2018 PISA. The Philippines had an average reading score of 340, more than 200 points below China (555) and more than 100 points less than the OECD average (487).
“Our collective mission — and this means, including our registrars here today — is to ensure that we are able to avert the further deterioration of the Philippine education system,” Duterte-Carpio said.
Duterte-Carpio added that with rapid changes in technology, Artificial Intelligence, and Robotics, many of the jobs we know today will be obsolete in the future.
Duterte-Carpio added that the country’s education system must know how to adapt and prepare the future workforce for the unprecedented changes already happening across industries.
“Therefore, student-centric learning is crucial to helping our Filipino children and youth become lifelong learners, to be adaptable and flexible to future work demands,” Duterte-Carpio said.
Duterte-Carpio added that the country needs to acknowledge the systemic problems within the institution. Problems that have contributed to the learning difficulties hounding our children.
“The Commission on Higher Education also has its own reform agenda to strengthen our higher education and workforce development,” Duterte-Carpio said.
Duterte-Carpio added that stakeholders all around the country — alongside international institutions involved in the movement to better the current state of education — are working nonstop to come up with remedies to the learning crisis brought about by the global pandemic.
Duterte-Carpio also cited the recently launched program of the Department of Education, the “MATATAG: Bansang Makabata, Batang Makabansa,” to set a
new direction for the agency and stakeholders in resolving basic education challenges.
She said the project seeks new pathways to resolve the challenges that the sector faces to ensure the delivery of basic education to learners in the post-COVID-19 pandemic.
“The next two to three years will be a period critical in the recovery and reforms that we expect to see in our education system,” Duterte-Carpio said.
“If we are able to do this successfully, we will be able to save the future of our children and the future of the Philippines,” she added.
“The kind of hard work that we exert, that we put into our jobs — being adults that children look up to — is supposed to be the kind of hard work that should spark the fire that will inspire them to work harder and harder to achieve their dreams,” Duterte-Carpio added.
Duterte-Carpio lauded ARSCU-TVI region 11 for Initiating the meeting, which devotes main attention to the advancement of all school registrars in both our basic and higher education institutions in Mindanao
“The result of your hard work is a beautiful tapestry of lessons learned, knowledge stored, technical and life skills developed, and emotional intelligence sharpened because you are there and will always be there, from beginning to end, for the student and the student’s future,” Duterte-Carpio said.