The Department of Education (DepEd) has announced the shift to a three-term school calendar starting on June 8, 2026, and ending on April 8, 2027.
DepEd has defended the abrupt shift to a trimester school year as strategic, saying it is aimed at optimizing the contact time between students and teachers. But many have pointed out that the shift can present a bureaucratic nightmare. According to the president of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), Ruby “Titser Rubs” Bernardo, the shift is an experimental DepEd policy that needs much preparation and the involvement of teachers in the policymaking.
From the perspective of public administration, teachers are frontliners in the actual delivery and execution of the realities created by policies crafted by top education managers. For example, during the administration of President Benigno Aquino III, Republic Act No. 10533, or the Enhanced Basic Education Act of 2013 that established the K-12 program, was expected to be implemented properly and well by teachers on the ground.
But the K-12 program, along with other factors, required much scrutiny when the Philippines was confronted by an educational crisis, as manifested in the Programme for International Student Assessment and the “learning poverty” results presented in the 2022 joint report of the Unesco and the World Bank titled “Where are we on Education Recovery?”
Beyond the policies executed in accordance with official documents, such as orders and memoranda, hearing and responding to the voices of the frontliners is essential in ensuring that both the principles and realities of policies on paper and their actual results are productive and progressive. But what is the reality in the Philippine educational system? Even if the foremost unions of teachers, such as ACT and the Teachers’ Dignity Coalition, are consulted in legislative hearings and are proactive in raising teachers’ concerns for the formulation of actual policies, the representation of teachers and their direct involvement in policymaking are still to be realized.
As Sherry Arnstein argued in her seminal paper, “A Ladder of Citizen Participation,” in 1969, tokenism is still prevalent. And it is highly evident in the case involving teachers in the Philippines: Despite attempts to inform, consult, and even placate teachers in the face of state shortcomings in terms of low salaries, lack of schools and classrooms, and discouraging work environments, there is still the perennial problem of being saddled by administrative and ancillary tasks (even with the existence of DepEd Order No. 002 s. 2024).
Teachers have yet to become partners and coequals in participatory governance. Shared governance, as Barbara Sporn theorized in 2007 in the context of education governance, is the contestation between sectors and stakeholders to reach an eventual consensus in ensuring that policymaking is democratically implemented.
Genuine and high-level shared governance in education can be observed when teachers themselves and/or their representatives (the unions) are permanently involved in the actual crafting of both internal and external policies. However, in most cases, shared governance is barely realized, with teachers presenting their demands and the bureaucracy and its mechanisms and institutions slow to address them.
Going back to Arnstein’s theory of citizen participation, considering that teachers are not just ordinary citizens but are among the primary nation-builders, it is with utmost importance that their representation and participation in policymaking must be observed. As it happens, the representation of teachers is still subject to policies and regulations that view them as docile and neutral. As a result, the continuous teacher exodus to other countries, their underemployment as career professionals, and the lack of opportunities for their advancement create more structural concerns in the long run.
When the brightest minds, even with their dedication to serve and bring about the best for Filipino learners, decide to leave the country due to financial and other concerns, it largely indicates neglect on the part of state institutions. Empowered policymaking and participatory governance for teachers can begin to be realized when these multidimensional and multistructural concerns are addressed. CS
Juniesy M. Estanislao is a teacher at Barangka National High School and a lecturer at the Department of Filipino, College of Liberal Arts, De La Salle University, Manila.
