March 31, 2023 – I have never claimed to be anything — but for the past eight months, the Department of Education has made strides in addressing the problems burdening our learners and education personnel.

Allow me to educate ACT Teachers because the group is obviously uninformed, if not deliberately paying no attention to the developments happening within the sector.

With the help of our partners, the Department has successfully reopened schools and restarted on-site learning — a decision that was vehemently opposed and criticized by ACT Teachers.

What would have happened to our learners if we allowed the demand of ACT Teachers to prevail over the urgency to reopen face-to-face learning?

In January, DepEd launched the Matatag Agenda, featuring the two-track approach of the Department — complementing the traditional solutions of hiring more teachers and building more classrooms with more innovative solutions of tapping modern technology to bridge the gaps in basic education.

ACT Teachers, meanwhile, has been in Congress for 12 years now.

Yet the education sector remains besieged by a string of problems.

For 12 years, ACT Teachers has been claiming to represent teachers in Congress.

Yet our public school personnel continue to face financial woes and we have a generation of learners that are facing several challenges.

What has this self-proclaimed education sector representative done to remedy the problems we are facing now?

And for 12 years now, ACT Teachers cannot even publicly and explicitly condemn the violence perpetrated by the terrorist group NPA against our learners, our teachers, and other school personnel.

To top it all, it is headed by France Castro, who is not only acting as lawyer of the terrorist NPA, but is also facing charges for the alleged kidnapping of Indigenous People’s children from Davao Region.

 

SARA Z. DUTERTE

Vice President of the Philippines

Secretary of the Department of Education

 

END