We need to define what quality education looks like. The report makes it clear that quality is our biggest education problem. "The country's performance in international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) confirms we have been in a learning crisis for a while now" (p.3). We all have our pet theories and solutions to solve this problem of low quality. The authors suggest we need more effort to discover the reasons to understand the situation better. But people outside DepEd can't contribute if the agency continues to limit the sharing of relevant data to the public.

 

Our private schools deserve better treatment from the government. The report showed that private school students performed better than public school peers in TIMSS and PISA. "Instead of harnessing the strengths of the better-performing private schools, we manage our education system largely ignoring the constitutionally mandated public-private complementarity. DepEd manages the education system as if only one exists, i.e., DepEd schools" (p.9). I want to add this is also true in the TVET sector. 

 

The TVET sector's hidden problem is also low quality. Higher education graduates enrolling in training institutions seem like a vote of confidence confirming that TVET is the path to employability. Little do we realize that this is the same group that takes away the employment opportunities from our TVET graduates. The report cited issues on enterprise-based training and the inability of the LFS to capture TVET graduates in the labor market adequately. But the biggest problem of TVET is also quality. First, we must look at the quality of students enrolling in TVET. If they did not have good preparation in basic education, why do we expect the problem to disappear when they transfer to TVET? And second, we need to look at the TVET institutions. The report recommended "develop and regularly publish more granular indicators of the training offering and performance of TVIs. At the minimum, there is a need for TVI and training-level information on training offerings, costs, passing rates in national certification, and employment rates" (p. 22). The low participation of TVIs in TESDA's STAR Program, an ISO-like certification to assess how many institutions implement their training programs beyond the minimum requirements, gives us a clue about the quality of our TVET institutions.

 

Not enough poor students reach higher education. The report has a graph that shows the enrollment rate in higher education by income decile. Our politicians think the solution to this problem is not to make public higher education accessible for all. But how will this policy benefit the poor if many have already dropped out of elementary and high school? To break the cycle of poverty in our country, we need a solution to prevent kids from low-income families from dropping out of school so they can reach, enroll and hopefully, graduate from our universities.