IT IS HIGH time that we have an education system administered by someone who is given a mandate by the electorate. Sara Duterte, who won the vice presidential race by a landslide (over 31 million compared with Kiko Pangilinan’s distant runner up of nine million) fulfills this role.
For a long time, we have seen education being managed by those who could not demonstrate public support. The past three Secretaries of Education: Dr. Leonor Briones (2016-present), Br. Armin Luistro (2010-2016) and Mona Valisno, who occupied the position towards the end of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s term, had no mandate from the voters. This matters in the context of, particularly, Br. Armin Luistro who dominated, over a supine Congress, the passage of K-12 as a viable education policy.
In 2011, during the first year of President Aquino’s term, Sen. Ralph Recto produced the results of a wide-ranging survey relating to the implementation of a potentially new education system. A significant finding was that “stakeholders” (which means parents and others who support our students) were not in favor of a system in which High School comprised more than four years.
Unfortunately, Br. Armin Luistro was not interested in what anyone said and pushed for ‘K-12’ which implied a six-year high school term.
Teachers were reporting that some students were not ready for Grade 1 when they entered grade schools. Consequently, Luistro engineered the passage of RA 10157 which made Kindergarten compulsory. This was a bizarre manipulation of Kindergarten’s role. At the time, a senior German educationist emailed me to express concern about this unwarranted change to Kindergarten education. For him, and, indeed me, compulsory Kindergarten should be an oxymoron.
The successful passage of RA 10157 prompted Luistro to promulgate what turned out to be RA 10533 which imposed a further 12 years of compulsory education before students could enroll in our tertiary education system.
Fortunately, President Duterte instructed tertiary education fees to be waived. It is just as well he did this. Otherwise, for economic reasons, many students who could benefit from tertiary courses would have found that they could not attend tertiary institutions because their families, consisting of several children could not have afforded the expenses.
We now have a high-handed education system consisting of 13 years of compulsory activity before students can attend tertiary courses. Was Congress asleep at the wheel?
Sara, with the benefit of electoral support, can evaluate and hopefully propose a different system which would genuinely make Philippines education globally competitive.
The ball is in her court./PN
