Some Duterte flacks have gone on overdrive to rue the resignation of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio from the Department of Education (DepEd) as a catastrophic loss to the government, forgetting that Sara’s first gripe was that she was not appointed defense secretary, a position that she craved for.
She should have known that in the history of this republic, Presidents do not appoint vice presidents to head the Department of National Defense (DND) or the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), two powerful posts reserved for the most loyal allies of the appointing power. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. knew that the Team Unity they contrived was not even an alliance or coalition but a mere electoral vehicle to assure the victory of two political dynasties that profited immensely from the national kitty.
Writing for Vera Files on June 24, 2024, the anthropologist Antonio J. Montalvan II analyzed the two-year posting of Sara at DepEd and noted that she was like a square peg in a round hole, appointing retired generals to the DepEd to create a militarized department. DepEd officials were surprised that former Maj. Gen. Nicolas Mempin, who once headed the Philippine Army’s 10th Division and led Task Force Davao (TFD), was hired first as a consultant for “confidential issues” and then promoted to undersecretary. Sara also named former Brig. Gen. Noel Baluyan, deputy commander of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division, as assistant secretary to help Mempin control DepEd’s administrative apparatus.
These appointments raised the hackles of ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, who complained about the surveillance and monitoring of overburdened teachers by military operatives who may be freelancing for the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). Over at the Office of the Vice President (OVP), Sara brought in Reynold Munsayac as assistant secretary after he was shipped to the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) during the previous administration. Then there is Kristian Ablan, formerly with the father Duterte’s Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO), where he became undersecretary, assistant secretary and deputy presidential spokesperson.
Montalvan said Ablan was associated with the controversial fire sale of DepEd laptops for public school teachers. The contract for the purchase of the laptops was cut during the time of DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones but its implementation was inherited by Sara Duterte. DepEd was unable to pay the logistics firm assigned to do the deliveries. The laptops ended up in retail stores. Ablan was in charge of the laptop deal under Sara. “Where did the allocated money for it go? The project cost P671 million and was to benefit some 11,495 public schools all over the country. Only a fraction reached public school teachers,” Montalvan disclosed. This issue was tackled by Rep. France Castro, who scored the DepEd for allowing political appointees to control laptops, which are vital for teaching and monitoring pupils and high school students.
But what really incensed Castro, Montalvan and ACT Teachers was the fact that Sara became practically a ghost employee at the DepEd as she crisscrossed the country with abandon while the department needed her to respond to issues like the deteriorating educational system, the lack of classrooms and complaints about the low pay of teachers. They raised a howl as to why the DepEd failed to improve the performance of students as mirrored in the results of the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) supported by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD.) In 2018, the Philippines ranked last at 79th. Under Overall Reading Literacy, only 1 out of 5 students (19.4%) reached the minimum proficiency level. Indonesia fared better at 31%.
In the 2022 PISA, the Philippines did not improve. OECD said: “Compared to 2018 the proportion of students scoring below a baseline level of proficiency did not change significantly in mathematics, reading and science.” Under Sara, the situation was as bad as in 2018. The Philippines ranked at the bottom four among 64 countries. The same day the report was publicized, Sara Duterte resigned as DepEd secretary without citing any reason for doing so. In August 2023, the advocacy group Tanggol Wika criticized DepEd’s removal of the mother tongue subject in the revised K-10 curriculum as a “recipe for disaster.” Without rhyme or reason, Sara removed the mother tongue subject in Grade 1 that was meant to introduce and explain to learners the significance of mother tongue use in Grades 1-3.
Teachers were gobsmacked as the mother tongue was the foundation upon which children can enhance their cognitive skills. The government’s policy research think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) noted that “DepEd removed mother tongue as a separate subject in the new curriculum to make way for Kinder to Grade 3 students to focus on foundational skills such as oracy and numeracy.” Without using the mother tongue to introduce new concepts to children, it would be hard for teachers to impart knowledge to their wards. In the 1970s, physics professors at the University of the Philippines in Diliman used the mother tongue to teach basic physics and advanced courses. The results showed the students understood the subject matter better when the medium of instruction was Filipino. Shokran lak.
