Best choice

It is not easy to pick someone to head the Department of Education (DepEd), President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (PBBM) admitted over the weekend. It would seem PBBM is obviously making sure his new Cabinet official can hit the ground running as his administration enters the middle of his six-year term of office.

After PBBM earlier delayed his decision, Malacañang finally yesterday announced Senator Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara was picked to become the new DepEd secretary. The resignation of VP Sara Duterte as DepEd secretary takes effect on July 19 yet.

Only then can Angara take over the biggest agency of the Philippine bureaucracy, where more than half a million public school teachers – from pre-school to elementary and secondary levels – are under DepEd’s employ. Angara succeeds VP Sara on July 20, or five days before he turns 52 years old.

Actually, PBBM and Sen. Sonny Angara worked together in the past. The first time was during their stint at the House of Representatives from 2007-2010. Angara was then congressman from Aurora while PBBM then represented his congressional district in Ilocos Norte. The two of them worked again together as senators from 2013-2016 when Angara was on his first term and PBBM was on his second and last term at the Senate.

PBBM initially announced he would be able to name the new DepEd secretary before the end of last week. “So I am fast-tracking everything. I said give me several names... Do we need an educator? Do we need an administrator? Do we need an accountant? What do we need? And that is what we are trying to determine right now,” PBBM explained afterwards.

So PBBM got a better politician cum professor of law like Angara who authored many education laws of the land.

In short, the President got a DepEd secretary who met his specifications as someone who can “manage the agency properly” and help “bring up the test scores” of our Filipino school children in education ratings by global bodies. One such indicator of the country’s state of basic education is the performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). In its latest survey, it showed the dismal bottom ranking of the Philippines – 78/78 in 2018 and 77/81 in 2022.

In fairness to VP Sara, the country’s latest PISA rating, however, was based on the survey done way before she took over as DepEd secretary. A mother of three children, a lawyer by profession and a former mayor of Davao City, PBBM cited these attributes as among the reasons he offered the DepEd post to VP Sara. She did not mention the reasons for her resignation from the Marcos Cabinet. She originally wished to serve concurrently as the secretary of the Department of National Defense (DND). After all, she is a reserved colonel of the Philippine Army.

It was quite a feat for PBBM to keep short his period of filling the latest vacancy in his Cabinet. It took a year before PBBM named Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro as his defense secretary. Gibo, along with Health Secretary Teodoro Herbosa, were appointed on the same day on June 5, 2023, or almost one year after PBBM took office at Malacañang Palace. It took almost 17 months before businessman Francisco Tiu Laurel Jr. was appointed as agriculture secretary, a Cabinet post that PBBM held in concurrent capacity from day one of his administration.

With Angara as the new DedEd secretary, the senator, who is on his second and last term ending on June 30 next year, is expected to breeze through the confirmation process by the Commission of Appointments (CA). He is the namesake son of the late Senate president Edgardo J. Angara, who once served as president of the University of the Philippines.

Since the 19th Congress is in recess, Angara is taking over as “acting’ DepEd secretary.

The CA is currently chaired by Senate President Francis Escudero. Himself newly installed as Senate chief, Escudero was among Angara’s fellow senators who strongly endorsed him to become the new DepEd secretary. With Angara joining the Marcos Cabinet, the so-called “Solid Seven” of ousted Senate chief Juan Miguel Zubiri is reduced to six. Angara was among the senators who did not sign the Senate resolution on the loss of confidence vote against Zubiri.

Another Marcos Cabinet official, Department of Migrant Workers Secretary Has Leo Cacdac, has yet to hurdle the CA after he suffered a “technical by-pass,” or due to lack of time. Incidentally, this will be the third and last regular session of the present members of Congress, many of whom are running as candidates in the coming May 2025 elections. The powerful 25-man CA will convene after the 19th Congress resumes session starting July 22 this year.

PBBM described the DepEd as “arguably the most important department” that receives the highest allocation from the national budget every year as required by our country’s 1987 Constitution.

The Development Budget Coordinating Council (DBCC) announced last week having set at P6.352 trillion the proposed budget for the year 2025. According to Department of Budget and Management (DBM) Secretary Amenah Pangandaman, this is 10.1 percent higher than the Congress-approved P5.768-trillion General Appropriations Act (GAA) of 2024. Under the DBCC proposal, DepEd along with its attached agencies will get P793.17 billion of the proposed 2025 NEP, compared to the P762.09 billion under the 2024 GAA.

The proposed 2025 national expenditure program (NEP) was approved by the President and the Cabinet during their weekly meeting yesterday at Malacañang. With this approval, Pangandaman disclosed the DBM will submit it to Congress on July 29, or one week after the third State of the Nation Address (SONA) of PBBM.

Despite the DepEd getting the lion’s share of the government’s annual budget to support and fund key programs and projects, Philippine education is bugged by the “learning crisis” among Filipino schoolchildren who have been faring low compared to their counterparts from other countries.

Thus, the appointment of Angara is the best choice to face this challenge.