ANGARA FILES RESOLUTION TO CREATE
BICAMERAL COMMITTEE ON EDUCATION

Senator Edgardo J. Angara yesterday filed Senate Joint Resolution No. 6, creating a Congressional Oversight Committee on Education, to review, assess and evaluate the current state of Philippine education.

A similar resolution was passed in 1990, creating the Congressional Committee on Education or EDCOM. This committee was responsible for the trifocalization of the educational system into the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and the Department of Education (DepEd).

However, other measures proposed by EDCOM were not acted upon or were not implemented properly, prompting Angara to draft this new resolution.

This Oversight Committee would be composed of five members from the Senate, as well as five members from the House of Representatives. The Committee would be tasked to coordinate and harmonize the policies and programs of the three existing agencies--DepEd, TESDA and CHED--and align them with the national development plans.

The resolution seeks to address the continuing problems in our country's education system such as the shortage of both teachers and classrooms resulting in class sizes too large for proper teaching. It also aims to decrease the number of out of school children which has been exponentially growing over recent years, resulting in nearly a quarter of the students dropping out before reaching grade 5.

To achieve these goals, the Committee shall examine all the levels of the Philippine education system and produce a report of its findings, recommending both long-term and short term solutions.

Angara stresses that our current educational structure is not consistent with international standards, saying, "Since our educational system is not comparable with the more developed countries, our graduates are sometimes unable to become competitive. We must therefore strive to improve this system so that we may overcome these obstacles to national development".