On Sen. Angara’s Senate Bill 2312

 Last July, Senator Sonny Angara filed Senate Bill 2312 which seeks to establish a teacher for Achievers Program (TEACH) that aims to produce the best teachers for the public schools in the Philippines.

The said Bill seems to contradict the fact that public school teachers are all qualified, skillful and talented. They have gone to four years study of pedagogy and trainings. Every year they are undergoing In-service Trainings (INSET) to update themselves on the current trends of teaching methodologies and strategies. They even attend masters and doctorate degrees relative to their respective field of specialization. So there should be no question about the qualifications of teachers when it comes to producing quality public school teacher.

There are few things that we need to consider with regards to the declining quality of Philippine education.

Overly Protective Policies. The Child Protection Policy, for instance, which was adopted by DepEd, is a little bit abused by students and parents. They use this law against the teachers especially on the issue of discipline in schools. Due to this, teachers are afraid to scold students if they are misbehaving during classes. 

Mass promotion policy. Under mass promotion policy, the teachers are forced to promote or pass an underperforming student, after intervention and remediations, because of the directives from the DepEd officials or their immediate superiors. This is because of the notion that it will affect the standing performance of a school which is the basis of giving the performance-based bonus (PBB).

Mismatches in the curriculum. Some subjects do not match with the academic strand. For example, in TVL particularly EIM, there are topics like Research II and Inquiries, Investigation and Immersion. In fact, the reason why some students enrolled in that strand is because they cannot easily comprehend the other strands like STEM and HUMSS. The TVL-EIM strand focuses more on skills and on hand practice. 

I believe that these are some of the problems that the Department of Education system should reconsider. 

However, one way to achieve quality education is by relieving teachers from voluminous administrative functions and other ancillary workloads. In this way, teachers can focus more on their teaching functions like preparation of teaching materials, development of intervention or remediation programs, plan their lessons, analysis of academic outcomes, and engagement with learners’ parents or guardians.   

Thus, I think Sen. Angara pushes the wrong bill.

✍️Efren K. Teres