Sara Duterte lauds Philippine Normal University's contribution to basic education

Vice President and concurrent Education Secretary Sara Duterte on Friday thanked the Philippine Normal University (PNU) for its significant contributions to the country’s basic education system.

In an education conference hosted by PNU and the Commission on Higher Education, Duterte highlighted how the university helped in the development of the curriculum for the K-12 program in the Philippines.

“Through your partnership with the CHED, you helped the Department of Education (DepEd) develop the Senior High School curriculum — producing teaching guides for core, Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics or STEM and Accountancy, Business and Management, or ABM subjects,” Duterte said in her speech during the International Conference on Quality Education in the New Normal in Rizal Park, Manila.

Duterte also said she was “not blind to the never-ending list” of issues encountered by the education sector citing her experience as the head of the local school board in Davao City when she was mayor.

Among these issues was the learning poverty in the country, first raised by the World Bank in 2019, and the Philippines ranking last among 79 countries in terms of reading and math in the 2018 results for the secondary level of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)

“Having an available budget or the lack of it is an essential factor in the failure or success of our efforts to address the problem of learning loss or sustain our gains or carry out reforms at DepEd,” she added.

Further, the Education chief mentioned the Basic Education Development Plan (BEDP) 2030 and admitted there remained room for improvement in the country’s education system, specifically in helping teachers sharpen their skills in contextualization to address the concerns of diverse learners and in strengthening instructional leadership and supervision to improve teaching quality with system-wide capacity development.

She then lauded the Philippine Normal University for the compendious work on their approach to providing accessible and quality training for teachers through their Research Center for Teacher Quality program (RCTQ).

“Through the research and technical work provided by PNU’s RCTQ to our legislators, we now have a national law that unifies approaches to enhancing teachers' knowledge, skills, and practices across the country from the pre-service to the in-service stage,” said Duterte. — DVM, GMA Integrated News