Loaded team wants more sectors involved, areas covered

If education expert Karol Mark Yee was to illustrate the country’s current education system, he would liken it to a patchwork of policies that evolved year-on-year across different administrations.

This situation, however, has resulted in complications and long-term challenges for the sector, which now faces a crisis—a situation that Yee and other members of the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) hope to resolve by the end of 2025.

Established on Jan. 23 this year under Republic Act No. 11899, which was passed into law in July 2022, Edcom 2 has been tasked to conduct a comprehensive national assessment of the education sector and come up with legislation and policy recommendations.

It succeeds the First Congressional Commission on Education that was created by Congress on June 17, 1990.

Yee, the Edcom 2 executive director, began his work on education policy with the late Sen. Edgardo Angara, who chaired the first Edcom.

One of his first mentors was Dr. Dionisia Rola, the first commission’s executive director who also served as the first University of the Philippines (UP) System’s woman chancellor and first UP Visayas chancellor.

“When I was working as a legislative officer in the Senate and we were legislating the K-12, Early Years Act, Kindergarten Education Act, they would tell me about all the work they did in the first Edcom,” Yee said in an interview.

He recalled that at the time, he had hoped to be given the same opportunity to contribute to improving the country’s educational system—a wish that was realized after two decades.

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Commissioners

Edcom 2 is cochaired by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian who heads the Senate committee on basic education, Sen. Francis Escudero, Pasig Rep. Roman Romulo and Baguio Rep. Mark Go. Other commissioners are Senators Sonny Angara, Pia Cayetano and Joel Villanueva, and Representatives Jose Francisco Benitez, Khalid Dimaporo and Pablo John Garcia.

The technical secretariat, also headed by Yee, has lawyer Joseph Noel Estrada as its chief legal officer.

A new feature of Edcom 2 is a 10-member advisory council composed of two representatives each from the academe, industry, government agencies, local government and civil society.

The formation of an advisory council, according to Yee, was “borne out of the insight and learnings in the first Edcom that if you only have policymakers who look at things on the national level through national policies, you cannot succeed because a lot of these things depend on multistakeholders.”

Civil society, for one, is very much involved in education with so many nonprofit and nongovernment organizations and foundations “doing so much good” that they should not be ignored and “be part of the discussions.”

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Academe, business

From the academe, Edcom 2 tapped Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, a former Ateneo de Manila University president who had extensive work to develop science and mathematics in the Philippines and Southeast Asia since the 1970s. Also chosen was Dr. Maria Cynthia Rose Banzon-Bautista, a sociology professor who served as dean of the UP College of Social Sciences and Philosophy before her secondment to the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) as commissioner.

The other members of the advisory council are Alfredo Ayala, iPeople Group of Schools president; Dr. Chito Salazar, president and CEO of Phinma Education and Philippine Business for Education; Rhodora Angela Ferrer, executive director of the Private Education Assistance Committee; Irene Isaac, former Technical Education and Skills Development Authority director general; Pasig City Mayor Victor Sotto; Taguig City Mayor Maria Laarni Cayetano; Maria Olivia Lucas, president of E-Net Philippines and Dr. Milwida Guevara, Synergeia Foundation Inc. executive director.

‘For love of country’

There are also different standing committees composed of experts who will help study and navigate the contexts of its 28 priority areas, which are classified into seven main themes.

These are early childhood care and development (ECCD), basic education, higher education, teacher education and development, technical-vocational education and training and lifelong learning, governance and finance and crosscutting.

Yee said no one among the advisory council and experts from standing committees receives compensation for their work in Edcom 2 because “everything is for the love of country and education.”

“We are very grateful because they are all very busy people. They are the experts in the field, the ones on the ground doing a lot of work and so they are very busy themselves. But they always make time to support the work of Edcom because they see how it comes together,” he added. According to Gatchalian, around 90 researchers also collaborate with the commission, with most of them working pro bono.

Green papers

In its first year, Edcom 2 has done discussions, site visits and research, following the same approach taken by the first commission in conducting one of the most extensive consultations in Philippine education history.

“With so many problems, we couldn’t do it ourselves so what we’ve done is to work with partners—universities, research fellows, to recruit the best scholars in the country to understand the challenges,” Yee said.Adopting the approach in other countries, the commission has also released “green papers” or documents intended to engage a wider set of stakeholders unable to participate in focused group discussions, hearings or consultations.

“This is meant to share where we are now; what do we think are the problems? What do we think are the possible solutions? What do you think? What do you suggest? What is the reality that we are not seeing?” Yee explained.

Backing key bills

About 120 stakeholders have submitted their inputs that were incorporated into the discussions.

“Even individual teachers write to us and I think people understand that they have a stake [in this] and that they could have a voice in this reform process. I think that’s an important win,” Yee said.

So far, Edcom 2 has filed five key bills that include amendments to the Early Years Act to improve the governance and implementation of early childhood education in the country. Others are the career progression bill for teachers aimed at improving the promotion process and removal of administrative tasks, a bill seeking to redefine the application of mother tongue as a medium of instruction, a bill amending the Philippine Teacher Professionalization Act of 1994 and another one on the creation of a tripartite council to institutionalize the industry’s participation in education.

Of the commission’s 28 priority areas, Yee said they focused on 12 for the first year, with the rest to be divided over the next two years.

Bullying

For 2024, he said they plan to concentrate on ECCD to understand why, based on research, 90 percent of parents think their children were too young for early childhood education.

The commission will also attempt to figure out why the Philippines has the highest incidence of bullying worldwide (based on the results of the 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment) for if students feel unsafe in schools, this will eventually affect their well-being and concentration.