Our future as a nation literally hangs on the education of our children and the education system that molds them, and the way things stand, we’re facing a rather murky future indeed. I wrote last week how the 2025 Program for International Student Assessment no longer puts us at the bottom in education outcomes. But we remain among the bottom one-fifth in the world, and up to three out of four Filipino students remain below minimum proficiency levels. On top of that, the already wide learning gap between rich and poor widened even more. Our education crisis persists.

It became evident early on to the Second Congressional Commission on Education (Edcom 2) that fixing our flawed education governance is paramount. The heaviest drags on the sector have to do with (1) too centralized, top-down governance; (2) policy directions that change with every new secretary of education (who changes even more frequently than the President); (3) insufficient budget worsened by inefficient and ineffective budget execution; and (4) inadequate appreciation and support for optimizing the role of the private education sector in the overall education system.

I’ve written of the “memocracy” that prevails in the Department of Education (DepEd). Edcom 2 learned that school principals will not (and believe they cannot) decide and take any action, especially on creative, locally adapted learning approaches, methods, and content, unless a memo from above explicitly instructs or permits it. Local government officials with a genuine desire and capacity to improve the learning environment in their schools cannot effect beneficial changes when principals and district supervisors feel constrained by perceived restrictions from above. And yet the Governance of Basic Education Act of 2001 (Republic Act No. 9155) promulgated “shared governance” and “school-based management,” explicitly empowering principals to, among others, “introduce new and innovative modes of instruction to achieve higher learning outcomes.” To his credit, DepEd Secretary Sonny Angara has enabled wider latitude for school heads and their immediate superiors, so they do not feel straightjacketed by imagined restrictions from above. He is also enabling moves toward decentralization and devolution of education governance functions best left at lower levels. This contrasts directly with the atmosphere that appears to have prevailed under his predecessor, known for whimsical directives that trumped time-tested education practice, apart from the suspicious use of unprecedented confidential funds. Still, “memocracy” is an ingrained culture that will not vanish overnight and will take years of sustained and consistent empowering leadership to overcome.