Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian during a hearing in the Senate. Senate PRIB file photo
MANILA, Philippines — Approximately P10 billion is needed to intensify the country’s academic recovery, Senator Sherwin Gatchalian said on Thursday.
Gatchalian, chairperson of the Senate’s committee on basic education, made his remark after it was revealed in the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) that the average scores of Filipino students in reading, mathematics, and science remained low compared to students from other countries.
Gatchalian said the Philippine government should focus on improving PISA scores in the next three years.
“One of the things I recommended is to intensify our learning or academic recovery. The Department of Education has about P2.9 billion pesos in its Academic Recovery budget for 2024, but we estimated — our office estimated — that we will need approximately P10 billion to intensify,” said Gatchalian in an interview over CNN Philippines’ The Source.
He likewise noted that the country needs not only a learning recovery, but an “intensified learning recovery” from kindergarten all the way to Grade 10 in order to help students catch up.
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“A lot of our students are still struggling to keep up with the grade levels they are in,” he pointed out.
Asked if he is trying to realign funding to increase DepEd’s 2024 budget for learning recovery, Gatchalian noted that the budget allocation process for next year is already near its final stage. Hence, it would be difficult to do so.
“I’m trying my best because the budget is already almost at the final stage because we’re at the bicam. We’ll try our best to realign, but if that will not happen because we’re at the final stage — then we have to do it through a whole of-government approach,” he said.
READ: Poor PISA ranking a wake-up call – DepEd
“We have contingency funds in different departments, we have other sources of funds scattered all over the different departments. If we can convince other offices to allocate funds for the remaining P7 billion that is needed for an intensified learning recovery, that will be the best case,” he added.
For Gatchalian, there is a need to treat the education crisis like a pandemic.
“Remember, during the pandemic everyone contributed funds, [including] government-owned and controlled corporations and the departments — because we want to get out of the pandemic as quickly as possible. The government spent P114 billion on buying vaccines. This in my opinion, is an education crisis and to get us out of this education crisis, we need to spend big,” he said.