The House of Representatives adopted Resolution 249 acknowledging the Department of Education headed by Secretary Jesli A. Lapus for its commendable performance in placing the basic education to greater heights.

The congressmen took notice of the numerous achievements of DepEd under the watch of Lapus who was appointed by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as DepEd Chief in August, 2006.

Among Lapus contributions to DepEd was his continuous improvement of the working condition of teachers and non-teaching personnel of the DepEd since he was a representative of the lower house. He exposed and streamlined the anomalous multi-billion peso automatic payroll deductions for onerous teacher loans, which adversely affected the net take home apy of some 300,000 public school tutors.

It was also during Lapus time that the Civil Service Commission allowed the teachers to teach for only six hours instead of the former eight hours per day. He was also credited by the different teachers’ organizations for increasing the budget of the department from P112 billion in 2005 to P149 billion in 2008.

In the same house resolution, it says that Lapus worked and contributed to upgrade the capability of teachers by intensifying the training program for teachers to advance their competencies in teaching English, Mathematics and Science.

DepEd's concerted efforts in improving the performance of students were also commended by the House. It was during Lapus time that result of the National Achievement Test (NAT) soared to an impressive increase of 10 percent in 2006 and 18 percent in 2008.

The appointment of some 5,890 school heads and 23,571 teachers, the construction of 30,102 classrooms and a whopping private sector support to public education of P4 billion under the Adopt-A-School Program and the continued and increasing assistance of the government to private education reaching to P 3 billion pesos which accounted to 48 percent of the total enrollees in the private schools have all contributed to the citation given by the lawmakers.

The House Resolution also cited DepEd efforts to increase participation rate of the students. Through the DepEd Feeding Program, the attendance of students in the public schools improved to 85% 2006 to 95% in 2007. The increase was brought by the increase in the feeding program which tripled in 2007.

DepEd also lowered the cost of the procurement of textbook by as much as 60 percent. It has earned recognition from World Bank as a best practice and was even replicated in other Southeast Asian countries and in Europe.

It can be recalled that DepEd got the highest approval rating with its 61 percent rating in the last quarter of 2007 Pulse Asia Survey.

On the other hand, Lapus was a back-to-back top rater among the GMA Cabinet members, holding the top spot in Pulse Asia and Social Weather Station surveys for two consecutive years. (with reports from DepEd Communications Unit)

Lorenzo E. Mendoza, Sunstar Davao