RCTQ-supported bill amending TEC law filed in Senate
Photo from wingatchalian.com
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian—Senate Committee Chair on Basic Education, Arts and Culture—championed the RCTQ-supported reform on teacher quality in Congress by filing Senate Bill No. 1887 on 21 October 2020 which seeks to amend Republic Act No. 7784, the law that created the Teacher Education Council in 1994.
RCTQ has worked with the Technical Working Group for Teacher Quality, an interagency body led by Cabinet Secretary Karlo Alexei Nograles that includes officials of the trifocal education agencies as members, to explore options for improving teacher quality. The most viable alternative agreed by the TWG was to strengthen the TEC by amending RA 7784.
The proposed law seeks to ensure the link and alignment of pre-service education with in-service education, and improve the coordination between the Department of Education (DepEd) and the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) in order to improve teacher education outcomes.
The strengthened TEC would work collaboratively with DepEd, CHED, Technical Education Skills Development Authority (TESDA) and teacher education institutions, but would remain independent of them.
The proposed law will help the TEC fulfill its original mandates to “identify and designate among existing private and public schools, teacher education institutions as centers of excellence for teacher education, at the national, regional, and provincial levels; and initiate a periodic review of curricula and programs for teacher education and training through participatory methods, such as self-assessment by institutions.”
In his press statement, Senator Gatchalian said the dismal results of the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET) in recent years have made it more urgent to improve the country’s teacher education quality. He noted that from 2014 to 2019, LET results show that the average passing rate was only 28 percent for the elementary level and only 36 percent for the secondary level.
Co-authored by Sen. Joel Villanueva, chair of the Senate committee on Higher, and Technical and Vocational Educational, the bill also seeks to expand the composition of the TEC to include the heads of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), the National Economic Development Authority (NEDA), and the Philippine Normal University (PNU) being the National Center for Teacher Education.
https://www.rctq.ph/?p=2003NewsTeacher Education Council
