EDUCATION Secretary Leonor Briones underscored the need to improve teaching science and technology in basic education to better prepare Filipino learners for the challenges of the future.

“With or without the pandemic, we will be faced with the challenge of catching up with technology, science, and many more innovations that will change our lives. It is a challenge to us in basic education to prepare our learners and ensure that they master the basics of science and technology,” Briones said in her keynote speech in EDUtech 2022.

She urged education leaders in the forum to capacitate learners on skills required for future jobs.

“Every learner must have a thorough grounding in science and technology to survive. Every learner must be prepared for a future that is evolving,” she added.

With the theme “Building back better and quality education in the Philippines,” the two-day EDUTech forum featured several DepEd officials who served as panelists in different sessions and shared their insights and best practices in education.

During the panel discussion for digital transformation in schools, Undersecretary for Administration Alain Del Pascua highlighted DepEd Commons as a step towards digitization and teacher upskilling.

“Even before the pandemic, we have already started the digital transformation in the Department of Education. This pandemic made us realize that there are still other technologies that we need to use, and it also made us hasten the digitization of education in the public sector,” Pascua said.

Last year, DepEd Commons recorded more than 10.5 million unique users nationwide with 4,762 uploaded learning resources and has become one of the most efficient complementary tools for blended learning.

Meanwhile, Undersecretary for Curriculum and Instruction Diosdado San Antonio acknowledged that hybrid learning is here to stay.

“This pandemic imposed a great challenge for all of us, to embrace change. We have gone from traditional to digital in a short time and we must recognize how far we have come,” San Antonio said.