PBEd convenes education stakeholders to take action on the learning crisis

Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) gathered education stakeholders from public and private sectors to come up with common solutions as the country continues to grapple with the learning crisis.

“We’re all here because we’re interested in seeing an improvement in the quality of our human capital. We want our country to become more competitive. We want to arm our people with the ability to improve the quality of their lives. This is not a job for one sector of society only, it needs an all-hands-on-deck and whole-of-society approach,” PBEd Chairman Ramon del Rosario Jr. said during the 2023 Higher Education Summit.

The 2023 Higher Education Summit with the thrust ‘Reimagining Workforce Development in the Philippines’ is the fifth in the series of summits organized by PBEd to push for education reforms and provide learners with better access to quality education and attain their aspirations and contribute to the country’s progress and development.

“These series of higher education summits speak to the commitment of multiple stakeholders, and the power of coordination. Education is a national economic strategy. It is everybody’s business,” PBEd Executive Director Justine Raagas said.

Over 80 key representatives from government industry, academia, and civil society organizations attended the summit organized by PBEd in partnership with the United States Agency for International Development last February 16 and 17 in Shangri-La, Mactan, Cebu.

Among the participants who joined the event were Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, Rep. Kiko Benitez, Rep. Mark Go, Commission on Higher Education Chairman, Dr. J. Prospero “Popoy” de Vera and Department of Education Usec. Epimaco Densing III.

The summit participants shared a list of priority areas to work on, namely: education governance, standards and assessment, public-private complementarity, teacher quality, and early childhood education care and development (ECCD).

“With the challenges in the education system, coordinated, collaborative and intentional work are necessary. Reforms in education governance must be in place to address challenges in devolution and proper coordination among education agencies. Public and private sector complementarity will also help in harnessing the private sector’s strengths and linkages with the labor market,” Raagas said.

“We also need to support our teachers and learners. Aligning with the right groups and networks to invest in ECCD is also a priority to ensure that learners are healthy and prepared to go to school. Teachers must also be supported in both pre-service and in-service to help shift their roles from sources of knowledge to facilitators of knowledge. Finally, to accurately measure how our interventions are working, there must be transparency in data and proper assessment,” Raagas stressed.

“The national system should be based on the weakest link to make sure that the system is good for the people in the end. If our system cannot take care of the weakest in our population, who are the kids from zero to five, how can we ever expect to make this a better system?” PBEd President Dr. Chito Salazar added.

At the end of the summit, participants acting as one sector, undertook to forge plans based on these areas to address the declining state of education and show their commitment in pushing for substantial education reforms. Several lawmakers, including Rep. Kiko Benitez and Rep. Mark Go, committed to come up with measures that would allow for greater public-private complementarity and autonomy for higher education institutions. These measures once filed will be crucial factors in generating transformative solutions for the sector.

Other education stakeholders and leaders have also expressed their commitment to continue to work together to ensure that learners are provided with quality education and equipped with competencies necessary to join the labor force.

“We’re coming together at a time where there is a major opportunity, which is EDCOM II (Second Congressional Commission on Education). We should not be dependent on one solution for reform, rather, we should be open to multiple solutions for reforms,” Salazar said.