ACT hopes Sara Duterte’s Basic Education Report will address issues

After videos of children having difficulty answering basic English questions went viral, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) over the weekend hoped that Vice President and Education Secretary Sara Duterte would address issues hounding the sector in her upcoming report.

According to ACT Chairperson Vladimir Quetua, the state of education in the country has slowly been declining.

The decline started even before the COVID-19 pandemic which forced schools to close and shift to online learning.

“Bilang nagtuturo ay ganon din actually ang kaganapan ano, at masakit mang sabihin, sa aming mga kaguruhan ay may mga ganyan din,” Quetua said in Sandra Aguinaldo's report on GMA’s “24 Oras Weekend” on Sunday.

(As a teacher, that is what is happening. As much as it pains me to say, there are also some instances of this even among teachers.)

He was reacting to a video of children trying to answer basic English questions and finding it difficult when they were asked to give the past tense of several verbs.

The video was also shared online by former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who called on the Department of Education (DepEd) to look deeper into the matter and address concerns moving forward.

“If there is a basis for unity, this is it. WE NEED TO FIX THIS. No more finger-pointing,” he said in a tweet, noting that the country no longer had national assessment tests to gauge the current status of education in the country.

The DepEd said Duterte was set to address the concerns in the Basic Education Report, scheduled to be released on Monday, in which she will lay down the steps to be taken by the agency.

“The Department of Education is cognizant of the various challenges hounding not only our learners but Basic Education, in general,” said DepEd Spokesperson Michael Poa.

“We have started our road to recovery when we opened our schools and brought our learners back to school last August 22, 2022. That being said, there’s certainly more work to be done,” he added. — Jon Viktor Cabuenas/DVM, GMA Integrated News