MORE than 100 educators, including former secretaries of the Department of Education, chairpersons of the Commission on Higher Education, and current and former presidents of colleges and universities endorsed the candidacy of Vice President Leni Robredo and Senator Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan.

In a joint statement released on March 2, the academicians signified their “unequivocal support” to the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem.

“We make this determination following scrutiny of the various candidates’ track record as servant leaders, their proposed plans for education, and more importantly, their character as individuals,” they said.

“As Robredo has demonstrated in her tenure as vice president and especially during the Covid19 pandemic, her brand of leadership shines through best in times of crisis – one that can find solutions that are context-based, data-driven and equity-oriented,” they added.

They stressed that the country needs an “Education President” to address the ongoing learning crisis and attain quality education for all.

They also lamented the Philippines’ poor performance in the recent 2018 Programme for International Student Assessment and the 2019 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, wherein the country ranked lowest among 79 and 58 countries, respectively.

“Such a wide gap between the performance of Filipino learners and the prevailing learning standards is made even more pressing by the disruption caused by the prolonged closure of schools during the Covid19 pandemic, the evolution of labor market demands in the light of the 4th Industrial Revolution, and the onslaught of disinformation, revisionism and alternative realities,” the group said.

“These challenges need to be faced head-on by a hands-on government,” they added.

The educators called on Robredo and Pangilinan to prioritize the following under their administration:
• Increase education funding to 6% of the country’s gross domestic product
• Pay attention to early childhood care and development
• Pursue necessary technology-mediated teaching and learning-related reforms to improve the quality of learning in schools
• Invest heavily in improving teacher quality
• Wage a nationwide campaign to enhance the value of technical and vocational education and training
• Align the qualifications learners acquire from formal, non-formal and informal sources with learning outcomes at different levels of the Philippine Qualifications Framework while further developing and implementing the Philippine Credit Transfer System
• Rationalize the role of public and private educational institutions ensuring complementarity and improving the efficiency of the entire education system
• Expand Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education subsidies
• Ramp up investments in research and development in research universities
• Ensure coordination between the Department of Education, the Commission on Higher Education and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority
• Focus on job creation to ensure that no graduate is left unemployed