Senate urges creation of Cabinet Cluster to address education crisis

In light of the persistent underperformance of the country’s education sector, the Senate has adopted a resolution urging President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to create a Cabinet Cluster for Education. The goal is to ensure the cohesive implementation of education laws, policies, reforms, and regulations across all government agencies.

Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 21, principally authored and sponsored by Senators Loren Legarda, Sherwin Gatchalian, Alan Peter Cayetano, Joel Villanueva, and Senate Minority Leader Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III, seeks the formulation of a long-term, integrated national education and workforce development plan. It also aims to address long-standing coordination gaps and planning inefficiencies in the education sector.

Currently, various interagency bodies coordinate on education-related concerns, but these efforts have repeatedly failed to establish a unified strategic direction necessary to strengthen the country’s education system.

“For decades, the education system has operated under a fragmented structure. This needs to be resolved if we want to upgrade the education of the next and coming generations of Filipinos,” said Legarda.

“What we need now is the will to connect agencies, discipline efforts, and commit to breaking institutional silos,” she emphasized.

Legarda clarified that the proposed Cabinet Cluster is not intended to centralize power, but to harmonize strategies, align efforts, and hold all agencies jointly accountable for outcomes—creating a system-wide, unified response to the nation’s education crisis. TRACY CABRERA