Education Cluster With Caution

By Herman M. Lagon

In the country, one does not often find education making front-page policy breakthroughs. But when Malacañang gave the green light, in principle, to the long-proposed Cabinet Cluster for Education, it felt like a much-needed gust of air had been allowed into a suffocating room. As classrooms reopen post-pandemic and our learners face daunting catch-up challenges, this development hints at a pivot from reactive firefighting to long-term structural alignment. Still, as with most things birthed by government imprimatur, the challenge lies not in making a plan but in making sure it does not end up another ceremonial tick-box.

EDCOM 2, the Second Congressional Commission on Education, deserves credit for pushing this initiative with grit and intelligence. After a year of data gathering, town hall consults, and cross-sectoral dialogues, the Commission boldly declared what teachers, students, and LGU partners have been whispering all along: our education system is broken not for lack of effort, but for lack of cohesion. It is not uncommon to hear of DepEd implementing K-12 reforms while CHED continues to follow outdated metrics, or TESDA modules remaining unused because DepEd instructors are not certified to teach them. Like a student preparing for three exams with three different rubrics, the system has been overwhelmed by its own disjointedness.

The cluster’s approval is a direct response to the findings of EDCOM’s Year One report, Miseducation: The Failed System of Philippine Education. It revealed that over 68 interagency bodies had been cobbled together over the years to fix coordination gaps in trifocalized education. Unsurprisingly, most of these failed to harmonize standards or pool resources effectively. The idea of creating one Cabinet-level cluster is not entirely new; the original EDCOM in the 1990s proposed a National Coordinating Council for Education. What makes today’s effort different is the gravity of the learning crisis we face and the unprecedented political will being shown—at least on paper.

But support from paper to pavement is another matter. The proposed Cabinet Cluster will include DepEd, CHED, TESDA, DBM, DOLE, ECCDC, and DOST, among others. Its main job? Craft a 10-year National Education and Workforce Development Plan. That sounds promising. But even the best plans, if derailed by turf wars or election-driven tinkering, are doomed to gather dust. Just ask any science teacher who saw a curriculum change midway through a school year because of a new Secretary’s vision board.

To make the cluster work, it needs to be steered not by politicians or appointees itching for the next promotion, but by public servants who understand what it is like to teach 50 kids in a room with two electric fans and one shared textbook. This means grounding decisions in field realities, not Manila-centric boardroom models. If we want learners to read, we must listen to the Grade 3 teacher in Antique who uses borrowed big books and her own salary to run a mini-library. If we want tech-voc graduates to find jobs, we must speak with the out-of-school youth in Mindoro who completed TESDA courses but cannot afford the tools to practice what they learned.

Let us be clear: the problem is not always the lack of funding. The General Appropriations Act has consistently increased education allocations. The issue is how money is spent. Does it build usable washrooms or just repaint walls before an inspection? Does it support local learning centers or fund more centralized, redundant training? In many ways, the cluster could streamline how resources are distributed, making sure funds flow to learning outcomes, not to overlapping mandates.

What makes this initiative compelling is that it connects education directly to workforce planning. The inclusion of DOLE and DBM means employability and budgeting are no longer afterthoughts. We have long known about the job-skills mismatch, with reports from the International Labour Organization (2023) highlighting that 44 percent of our graduates are underemployed or working in fields unrelated to their degrees. A unified education-workforce development plan may finally end the cycle of teaching skills no one is hiring for, while industries search for skills no one is teaching.

However, caution must temper celebration. The Cabinet Cluster must not become a political Trojan horse. Once political personalities begin to brandish it as their legacy project, or worse, use it to centralize power and marginalize independent educational stakeholders, it loses its soul. Governance by cluster should never mean monopoly of vision. Instead, it must draw wisdom from public school teachers, rural barangay officials, alternative learning advocates, and even learners themselves. From grassroots to national level, coordination must mean co-ownership.

Our educators are not allergic to change; they are allergic to empty promises. They are used to plans that arrive too late or policies launched without proper orientation. For them, what matters is not a sleek framework but whether it translates into lighter workloads, working printers, safe classrooms, and motivated students. The cluster, then, is not a magic pill. It is a lever. Whether it will lift or crush depends on how responsibly it is used.

To its credit, the Department of Education has already begun recalibrating with grounded reforms like the Comprehensive Rapid Literacy Assessment and the enhanced Phil-IRI tools. Programs such as Brigada Pagbasa have been strengthened, and in Iloilo, for example, there are localized literacy drives backed by LGUs and NGOs. While uneven and sporadic, these are signs that the system is willing to pivot—if given the space and support.

This is where the call for discernment quietly applies. Effective reform is not about reacting quickly but choosing wisely. It requires the ability to pause, examine deeply, consult genuinely, and act deliberately. A Cabinet Cluster for Education should do exactly that—create an environment where decisions are not rushed for optics but formed for impact. Where policy directions are not anchored on mere data, but on what those numbers mean to real people.

In a country that has weathered curriculum shifts, funding debates, and a pandemic that exposed digital inequities, the creation of the Cabinet Cluster is a potential turning point. But its success depends not on its existence, but on how faithfully it sticks to its founding principle: coordination for coherence, not control. It must serve students, not politics.

Let it be said, years from now, that this was not just another committee formed to chase a crisis. Let it be remembered as the time the system finally paused, listened, and decided to move as one.

Now that would be a legacy worth teaching.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ”student of and for life” who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions he is employed or connected with.