After education, now the culture

Through these years, our country’s educational system has undergone dramatic, if not drastic changes and reforms. The mother of these reforms originated from the package of laws that were crafted out of recommendations contained in the congressional Education Committee (EdCom) spearheaded by former Senate president Edgardo Angara.

After being retired from politics for a long while now, Angara is back again in the public service. President Rodrigo Duterte appointed the elder Angara last May this year as special ambassador to the European Union. His namesake son, Sonny Angara is currently a first term member of the Senate.

The elder Angara is formerly president of the University of the Philippines – the country’s premier state university – before he first ran and won at the Senate during the 8th Congress. It was during his first two terms, or 12 years as Senator when he pursued educational reforms as they recommended under the EdCom.

One of the major reforms by the EdCom that needed laws to implement them was the reorganization of the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS). In separate laws approved by Congresses in the past was the creation of the Department of Education (DepEd) that will exclusively handle basic, primary and secondary education.

Another law was approved that created the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to handle tertiary education. A separate law likewise established the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for vocational courses.

Then several Congresses later, another law was approved to implement a curriculum change to make the Philippine education at par with the rest of the world’s education system. Called as the K-to-12 program, the Philippine curriculum now covers Kindergarten and 12 years of Basic Education. This is divided into six years of primary education, four years of Junior High School, and two years of Senior High School (SHS) to prepare graduates for tertiary education.

During our Kapihan sa Manila Bay last Wednesday, we learned that the first batch of Grade 12, or the senior high schools will be graduating already at the end of this school year 2017-2018. And also, that they will also be the first beneficiaries of the free college tuition should they decide to pursue their higher learning courses in any public tertiary educational institution. 

CHED Director Nicolas “Nikki” Tenazas told us about this in our Kapihan sa Manila Bay breakfast forum that we hold every Wednesday at Cafe Adriatico in Remedios Circle, Malate. The CHED director and Mark Lim, the official spokesperson of the National Union of Students in the Philippines (NUSP) discussed with us the newly signed Republic Act (RA) 10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Act.

RA 10931 gave 60 days for the CHED to come up with its implementing rules and regulations (IRR) which Tenazas announced will take effect in the next school year 2018-2019 in time for the first batch of graduates of K-to-12, or Grade 12 senior high school students. 

President Duterte signed last Aug. 3 RA 10931 which, among other things, will henceforth provide free education in all 111 state universities and colleges (SUCs), local universities and colleges (LUCs), and state-run technical and vocational (tech-voc) schools to qualified students. According to Tenazas, there are currently 107 LUCs but only 18 of them are registered with the CHED.

Tenazas cited it was not attractive for LUCs before to accredit themselves with CHED because they do not get funds from them or from the national government. Precisely because as LUCs, they get their funding from their respective local governments.

“But now, change has come. They must pass through the CHED because they can only get their allocation for free college tuition and other fees that will all come from the national government,” Tenazas pointed out.

As far as CHED is concerned, Tenazas said, they would be guided in the drafting of the IRR for the new law from the template of the Unified Students Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education, or UniFAST for short. Tenazas is the program director of CHED for UniFast.

He believes it would not take long for the CHED to draw up the IRR since they have learned lessons from the past when they crafted the IRR for the UniFAST under RA 10687.

Speaking for the students, Lim hopes the CHED will again include the NUSP as among the stakeholders they wil consult in the drafting of the IRR. While students in public education system will enjoy the benefits of this new law, Lim expressed the hopes that CHED would also try to step in stronger to regulate to minimum the tuition increases every school year by private education institutions.

After overhauling our country’s education system, the present 17th Congress is now into cultural reorganization.

Sen. Loren Legarda sponsored at the Senate floor the other day the passage into law of the proposed creation of a Department of Culture under Senate Bill 1528. In her sponsorship speech, Legarda told her Senate colleagues that this measure is among the priority legislation of this Duterte administration as espoused in the Culture Chapter of the Philippine Development Plan 2017-2022. Likewise, she cited, this was endorsed to Malacañang as one of the priority legislative agenda of the Human Development and Poverty Reduction Cabinet Cluster.

“The Department of Culture will promote a national identity, which will provide our nation a strong sense of direction and order of priorities, and that identity should be at the core of our development if what we strive is to be truly a sovereign nation,” Legarda stressed.

Under this proposed legislation, the following culture-related government agencies will be attached to the Department of Culture, namely: Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP); National Museum of the Philippines; National Historical Commission of the Philippines; National Library of the Philippines; National Archives of the Philippines; Komisyon sa Wikang Filipino; Intramuros Administration; National Parks Development Committee; Nayong Pilipino Foundation;  Film Development Council of the Philippines; National Book Development Board (NBDB); and the Design Center of the Philippines.

With these educational reforms already put in place, the “culture” component of the defunct DECS may also soon gets its own place in the sun. That is, if the Department of Culture is approved into law.