EDITORIAL - Promises made

During the Basic Education Report last Monday, Vice President Sara Duterte Carpio vowed to "to push for educational reforms in response to systemic challenges in various aspects of the sector."

One change she promised was something many had been asking for; the revision of the controversial K to 12 curriculum which, until now, has yet to be proven effective.

“We will revise the K to 12 Curriculum to make them more responsive to our aspiration as a nation, to develop lifelong learners who are imbued with 21st-century skills, discipline, and patriotism,” she said.

The other things she promised was building more resilient schools and classrooms, providing power to schools in far-flung areas, and giving schools e-classroom packages.

But perhaps the best thing she promised was transparency to avoid corruption in the procurement process.

“The procurement practices at the Department of Education had red flags that demanded immediate actions… This strand is ordered to ensure that the delivery of services is done within the period required by law, following the processes mandated by law,” she added.

Plans like these should have been something she laid down back when she started as Education secretary.

It is good she is finally paying attention to what should be done at DepEd. No more of “surveillance and intelligence” operations on teachers nonsense. Perhaps she has finally accepted that she didn’t get the Department of National Defense portfolio, accepted it, and moved on. Good for her.

Of course, promising is one thing and seeing that promise through to fruition is another.

In 2016 another Duterte made a bunch of promises that got him elected to the highest position of the land. A promise to stop corruption, a promise to end the drug problem once and for all, a promise to make contractualization illegal, a promise to stand up to China’s grabbing of our territories, among others.

We all know what happened to those promises.

Of course, she isn’t her father and this burden doesn’t fall on her alone. For now it seems her head is really in the game. Now let’s see if all these promises bear fruit.