THE Second Congressional Commission on Education or the EDCOM 2 has released its findings as it celebrated its first year of operation.

In its Year One Report entitled ‘Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education’, the Commission highlighted its findings in 12 out of its 28 Priority Areas, following its first year of work.

This is in line with its mandate under RA 11899 to report to Congress its accomplishments, findings, and recommendations periodically.

EDCOM 2 was formally convened on January 23, 2023, and has since initiated a national effort to diagnose the primary challenges leading to poor learning outcomes, together with its Advisory Council, Standing Committee members, and its Technical Secretariat.

The report included 40 recommendations of EDCOM, including actions taken by the Commission in the past year.

In Early Childhood Care and Development, EDCOM 2 urged the government to find possible complementarities of the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program and the Food Stamp Program of the Department of Social Welfare and Development.

To solve dilemmas in textbook procurement, the Commission also recommended that the Department of Education should look into the possibility of procuring books that are already available on the market rather than engaging publishers to develop new ones.

Under its recommendations for Higher Education, the Commission stressed the need to prioritize the poorest of the poor for the Tertiary Education Subsidy.

This is following the Commission’s findings that between 2018 and 2022, the proportion of the grantees of the subsidy that comes from DSWD’s Listahanan 2.0 and 4Ps has declined markedly, from 74% to 31%.

EDCOM 2 also found that teachers continue to bear the burden of about 50 administrative and ancillary tasks, despite efforts to allow them to focus on teaching across many administrations.

While EDCOM 2 discovered that participation in Technical-Vocational Education and Training programs has been steadily increasing, 64 percent of programs with training regulations are still low-level – NC1 and NC2 programs.