HANDS down, the most difficult department to manage would be the Department of Education (DepEd). There are 875,514 public school teachers, 20.4 million students, and a budget that, before 2026, was hardly enough to make a dent in the system.
Our students are at the bottom of international assessments in reading, science, mathematics and critical thinking. And we have a classroom backlog of 165,443 rooms, which have led to classes being held under the trees, very early in the morning, or in the early evenings. Some classes have 60 students or more, cramped in quarters that have small windows and dilapidated doors.
We have written about some of these issues before in this space. Fortunately, the DepEd will be getting a budget of P1.015 trillion this year, a high allocation that would, hopefully, start the reforms we sorely need in the education system. These reforms include both physical and intellectual infrastructure.
The physical infrastructure involves the construction of more classrooms. On his own, Education Secretary Sonny Angara has sourced P84 million from private donations and has built classrooms from that amount. They have also begun repurposing the POGO buildings, cleaning and renovating, putting up dividers and blackboards, and furnishing with tables and chairs. The aim is to turn these abandoned buildings, which once housed gambling dens pernicious to the nation, into rooms where learning begins.
The intellectual infrastructure involves the hiring of more teachers, guidance counselors and administrative staff. The backlog stands at 56,000 teachers; the irony being that teachers also often work as guidance counselors, or worse, as glorified clerks in our public schools.
The hiring of guidance counselors was hamstrung by the government requirement for them to have graduate degrees in guidance counseling or psychology. Reportedly, this requirement has since been amended, such that those with undergraduate degrees in said subjects, or those taking graduate degrees, could be hired provisionally.
The intellectual infrastructure also includes buying more books, e-books and providing online learning resources, as well as the installation of faster Wi-Fi in the schools. Secretary Angara announced that for the school year 2026-2027, they have allocated P330 million for the purchase of books and e-books. Smart Telecoms has signed up with DepEd to provide free Wi-Fi to the rural schools, and a project will sign up Starlink to provide Wi-Fi to the far-flung schools in the mountains and the islands.
Sen. Loren Legarda, who has done a great job at promoting culture and the arts, has also proposed amendments to the K-3 curriculum. She has filed the K-3 Foundational Learning and Nurturing Care Act, a landmark measure aimed at improving early education. The bill seeks to strengthen literacy, numeracy and socioemotional learning during the critical years of kindergarten to Grade 3. In effect, this will bridge the gap between early childhood care and the formal K-12 system.
Legarda underscored the urgency of the measure, citing Edcom 2 findings that nearly half of Filipino learners are unable to read at the grade level by the end of Grade 3. Global studies by Unicef and the World Bank further reveal that 90 percent of Filipino children at late primary age cannot read and understand a simple story. This puts the Philippines among the countries with the highest poverty literacy rates in the world.
The senator noted that while the Philippines has an established Early Childhood Care and Development framework under Republic Act 12199, a critical “missing middle” remains. She explained that the bill adopts a prevention-first strategy, ensuring that children build strong foundations early. This reduces the need for costly remediation later.
Concretely, the bill calls for high-quality, language-rich, and numeracy-rich instruction integrated with socioemotional learning and values formation. We laud this twinning of learning with socioemotional learning and values formation. Our students will not only read and count, but also build positive relationships, make responsible decisions, and navigate challenges with empathy and resilience.
Indeed, foundational learning means more than learning the four skills of reading, writing, listening and speaking. It means more than knowing how to add, subtract, multiply and divide. It’s also about building the skills, habits and values that will shape our children for life. It is about shaping citizens who can think critically, care deeply about themselves, their families, communities and country. In effect, it is about raising citizens of the world, who can act with integrity and responsibility.
It’s also about giving our children the power to dream.