Good morning Mr./Madam Chair, all the honorable members of the House, and all the guests present today,

I am Gie Rodenas, Deputy Spokesperson of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, the sole and broadest alliance of student publications in the Asia Pacific since 1931.

Our education system faces yet another assault: foreign ownership of educational institutions. As primary stakeholders, whose futures are at full stake, we stand on our ground: this is a treachery to the Filipino people, and this deprives us of our collective identity and future.

We stand in opposition to any amendment on the education provisions of the ‘87 constitution, particularly to Paragraph 2, Section 4 of Article XIV (14) that seeks to open the full ownership of schools to foreign investors, because 1) it undermines our nationalist values and principles, and the long history of Filipino struggle for independence and liberation; 2) it is baseless and detached from the recommendations of government agencies and education experts; and 3) it misplaces priorities, deviating from genuine resolution of persisting education woes.

Protectionist constitutional provisions in the constitution, which limit foreign-owned equity in educational institutions to 40 percent, are necessary to protect the nationalist interests of Filipinos amidst the pressure to submit to international market forces. This is against the backdrop of the perceived trend to liberalize trade and the need to service the ballooning debt of the country left by the excesses of the first Marcos dictatorship. 

These policies, contrary to claims of narrow-sightedness and exclusion, were crucial in the actualization of the greater Filipinization agenda—to prioritize the development of Filipinos amid the challenges of globalization. The 1987 ConComm allowed foreign equity but with the intention to transition to full Filipino ownership, as provided in the clause:"...the Congress may, however, require increased Filipino equity participation in all educational institutions".

Healthcare worker and educator Minda Luz Quesada, one of ConComm's six women commissioners, raised the fundamental principle for the formulation of the aforementioned provision on education. She quipped: 

“The underlying principle that the committee was guided by is the recognition that education is a very vital mechanism for inculcating and developing the concept of nationalism. That once Filipinos do not have that effective control in this particular dimension of our societal life, then we can never learn to become self-reliant and there will always be this subservient and colonial mentality that is characteristic of our citizenship.

I think that should help us now look at education as a very vital instrument for the liberation that we were talking about, the total liberation and development of the Filipino.” 

Her statement may be dated, but it remains relevant in the stride toward fostering genuine nationalism and combatting colonial mentality, which hampered our efforts toward nation-building. The same colonial mentality manifests in speculations that this limits us to localized perspectives and restrains the potential of our children to see a bigger worldview because we believe that a truly nationalist Filipino education can be just as enriching, if not more.

If Congress is truly concerned with improving the quality of education in the country, then it must run a full review of all major assessments and recommendations from expert studies, including those commissioned by the government itself. 

In the past thirty years, several assessments have been deployed with the objective of understanding the ills of the education system and responding to them accordingly. Among these are: Making Education Work, the report of the Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM) of 1991, the 1998 Philippine Basic Education Sector Studies  by World Bank, the Presidential Commission on Education Report of 2000, the UNDP Human Development Reports, the Education Outcomes in the Philippines by the Asian Development Bank, the Roadmap for Higher Education Reform by CHED in 2012, the Philippine Education For All Review of Deped in 2015, the Public Education Expenditure Tracking and Quantitative Service Delivery of World Bank and USAID in 2016, the 2020 Review of the Mandate/Functions, Management Systems and Processes of Agencies in the Executive Branch: Education Sector, commissioned by the Department of Budget and Management, the 2024 Report of the Second Congressional Commission on Education

What strikes us is that among all these assessments, none have recommended the removal of any of the provisions limiting foreign equity in the sector.

In fact, EDCOM I and EDCOM II were established 30 years apart, but they reflect, if not restate, the same findings: Philippine education is in a state of chronic crisis, and decades of reforms have been insufficient to address this plague at its very core.

Furthermore, persisting problems in the education system—growing inaccessibility of education services, inadequacy of public spending for education, insufficiency of necessary learning infrastructures and resources, and stagnation of the quality of teacher education, among others—require more serious attention by Congress. This, against Charter Change, should be prioritized.

One glaring piece of evidence is the consistent underspending of the government on education—way less than the UNESCO-recommended six percent of the GDP benchmark education budget.

The enactment of RA 10931 or the Universal Access to Tertiary Education Act supposedly is a stride in democratizing access to education. However, it has only benefited a limited percentage of the economically disadvantaged population of the Philippines because 88% of higher education institutions in the Philippines are privately owned. Easing restrictions on foreign ownership will only heighten the commercialization of this crucial social service, and further justify the inadequacy of government funding for education. 

Apparently, the government must face the truth: Charter Change and foreign ownership will never solve the lingering education crisis. Decades of shortsighted and detached frameworks and plans have utterly failed to root the causes of this malady in the system. This is furthered by a leadership hesitant to acknowledge genuine solutions: strengthening our schools’ public character together with competent and qualified leadership and stakeholder-centered management.

But as long as Marcos Jr remain alienated from the objective truth on the ground, and stick to band-aid Chacha, the government will only commit treachery against the Filipino people and this will further deprive us—the youth—of our collective identity and future. ●

This address was delivered during the March 4, 2024 deliberation on the Resolution of Both Houses No. 7 at the House of Representatives.