‘Legacy of unresolved issues’ at DepEd

By now, former senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara might have started to grasp the enormity of the challenges that he is confronted with as the new secretary of the Department of Education, no thanks to the “legacy of unresolved issues” he inherited from Vice President and former DepEd chief Sara Duterte.

On top of the chronic problems with overcrowded classrooms, lack of textbooks, teachers, and school buildings, the Commission on Audit (COA) has discovered a multitude of irregularities at the frontline agency, among them the delays in the delivery of nutribun bread and pasteurized milk intended for schoolchildren in three regions as part of its P5.69-billion School Based Feeding Program.

There were cases where these were not delivered at all, while some of those that did were deemed unfit for human consumption as they had either expired or were racked with molds and pests, a desecration of the DepEd’s supposed commitment “to provide good nutrition to learners.”

COA likewise flagged DepEd—which had been under Duterte for two years, from the start of the Marcos administration to June this year when their “unity” crumbled—for the slow use of funds for crucial projects that had been approved in the budget and designed to upgrade the quality of education in the public school system.

Among these are the P5.1-billion Learning Tools and Equipment for Science and Math Equipment and Technical Vocational Livelihood Equipment; the P20.547-billion DepEd Computerization Program; and the P1.408-billion Last Mile Schools Program that should have started yielding benefits had they been implemented as envisioned.

Possible irregularities

The COA likewise called out the DepEd for unremitted taxes amounting to P1.3 billion owed to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, P3.1 billion to the Government Service Insurance System, P503 million to Philippine Health Insurance Corp., and another P182 million to the Pag-Ibig Fund, a great disservice to the DepEd workers including public school teachers and school administrators who are counting on those contributions for their needs and retirement.

Ako Bicol party list Rep. Jil Bongalon also raised this week possible irregularities in the procurement in 2023 of overpriced laptop and other ICT materials under the DepEd Computerization Program which had a budget of over P11 billion each in 2022 and 2023.

And these are just among the most recent findings by state auditors.

Last year, COA discovered “unauthorized, unnecessary, and dormant” bank accounts containing a total of P362.8 million being kept by the Office of the Secretary and several school division offices “without specific authority or legal basis.”

If these were not enough to make any citizen’s blood boil, the Congressional Policy and Budget Research Department underscored that in 2023, only 192 or a minuscule 3 percent of the 6,379 target new classrooms had been completed. Even then that was already an achievement from 2022 when “not even a single classroom” was constructed, for an unheard of “zero (0)” achievement.

Widespread support

The same report also noted DepEd’s record of P10.18 billion in accumulated unliquidated cash advances based on the 2022 COA report, which raises valid questions if the funds intended to solve the education crisis had been misused or lost to corruption.

The crises besetting DepEd are indeed dispiriting, but Angara must not be disheartened in steering the massive bureaucracy in the right direction.

Indeed, Angara should take this as a singular opportunity to leave a legacy in the country’s education sector, leveraging on his own experience as a legislator and an advocate for the education sector as well as the widespread support from the legislature, executive, civil society as well as the private sector who have faith in his abilities to turn the page at DepEd.

Angara is off to a good start as he is showing steely determination to work even triple time to execute DepEd programs meant to arrest the deteriorating quality of public school education and work to raise it to at least the level of most of its peers in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Clean slate

Angara has even sought an additional budget of P61.74 billion for 2025, on top of the P793.177 billion under the 2025 national budget.

He said that the additional funds will primarily go to the construction of an additional 12,000 new classrooms, procurement of textbooks and other instructional materials, certification of tech-voc graduates and special needs education.

If approved, Angara is presented with a clean slate and a golden opportunity to right the many wrongs of the previous DepEd leadership by faithfully implementing the funded programs.

The Philippines is already playing serious catch-up, thus failure to fulfill his mandate is not an option for Angara.

The very future of the Filipino nation is at stake thus he should forge ahead with the steely determination to gain lost ground, and not leave the vital agency even worse than he found it.