Look out for plight of teachers, Marcos tells Sara Duterte

FILE PHOTO: Ferdinand Marcos Jr.and Sara Duterte-Carpio at a campaign sortie in Laguna on March 12, 2022. (Photo from the Facebook page of Bongbong Marcos)

MANILA, Philippines — While he does not want to preempt the plans of incoming Department of Education chief, Vice President-elect Sara Duterte on the country’s education system, President-elect Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he reminded her to lookout for the plight of teachers.

In a press briefing on Monday, Marcos said he and Duterte have talked about several issues surrounding the state of education in the country.

These, he said, includes the switch of the language of instruction to English and whether the K-12 program is still needed.

“Ang pinag-usapan lang namin, there was also the question when to start to teach in English, when we move from lingua franca to English; ‘yung K-12, kung kailangan pa talaga ‘yung K-12 and many of the other issues,” Marcos said.

(We talked about the question of when to switch from our lingua franca to English as the medium of instruction and if the K-12 is still needed.)

“Ang akin laging pinapaalala sa kanya is ‘yung mga teacher. Kailangan alalayan ang mga teacher, kailangan i-training ang mga teacher para maganda ang maging trabaho nila,” he added.

(For me, I always remind her about the support for teachers. They need to be supported and trained so that their jobs will be good.)

Support for teachers not only includes individual benefits but training, supplies and equipment.

“We have to do a lot to recover our very good grading before. Kailangan nating balikan ‘yan, mahirap mag-compete kung hindi natin ayusin ‘yung training ng mga kabataan natin,” Marcos said.

(We need to regain that because it will be hard to compete if we will not do good on the training of our children.)

Duterte earlier revealed that Marcos had wanted a review of the K-12 program.

EDV