COMPREHENSIVE EXAMINATION

EDUCATION 226 (SCHOOL LEGISLATION)

MID YEAR 2021

A. DIRECTIONS: Answer COMPREHENSIVELY.

1. Explain the two basic constitutional objectives of Philippine education.

Objective 1 Protect and promote right of all citizens to quality education.

Objective 2 Formation and strengthening of ethical and spiritual values, develop
moral character and personal discipline, encourage critical and creative thinking.

The first objective mentioned above is the Section 1 of Article XIV of the 1987
Philippine Constitution. This objective completely stated that the state shall protect and
promote the right of all citizens to quality education at all levels, and shall take
appropriate steps to make such education accessible to all. So, in order ensure the
promotion of right of all citizens to quality education at all levels, various laws were
made and utilized in the Philippine Educational System. The Department of Education
(DepEd), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) and Technical Education Skills
Development Authority (TESDA) are taking appropriate steps to make education
accessible to all.

The Universal Kindergarten Act/Compulsory Kindergarten was signed into law so

that children will be prepared for formal schooling. Quality education is being ensured
on this act because children must be exposed with various experiences leading them to
be more ready and prepared for formal education.

The reform on the education was realized and named as Enhanced Basic
Education Act of 2013 (K to 12 Law) to align the curriculum with global standards. One
of the vision of DepEd and CHED is to produce globally competitive learners equipped
with desirable values and skills. So being a product of Kto12 program, I know that they
have mastered the competencies especially because of the spiral progression of the
concepts.

And to give access to tertiary education, President Rodrigo Duterte signed a law
entitled Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education where Filipino students can
receive a subsidy from the government giving them free access to colleges and
universities. This is an inclusion of education, that higher education is no longer a
problem for poor students because it is already free. Aside from that CHED had issued
quality assurance guidelines to ensure quality of students in college.
 The second constitutional objective of the Philippine education is the “Formation
and strengthening of ethical and spiritual values, develop moral character and personal
discipline, encourage critical and creative thinking”. In terms of formation and
strengthening ethical and spiritual values, there are school activities that are conducted
of which learners are given awareness on how to apply those values. There are also
religious activities conducted to practice spiritual values of learner. In addition, students
are also taught how to respect others belief in spiritual aspect. In terms of moral
character and discipline, they are being taught by the teachers especially inside the
classroom how to behave morally upright. To encourage critical and creative thinking
among learners, teachers always included class activities preferably group activities that
would sharpen their minds to be bold, become expressive of their thoughts and ideas
and most of all to embrace creativity with them leading them to think outside the box.

2. What are the crucial duties and obligations of teachers to ensure quality
education? Elaborate.

Ensuring quality education as mandated by our Constitution has never been easy
especially to us educators. In fact, we perform critical duties and obligations in order to
bear with the mandates just like facilitating student’s learning, asking them questions,
lecturing, praising or critiquing, assigning homework, supervising and evaluating them
through examinations, and at the end of each quarter, we are grading each of them.

Teaching involves a lot more than just performing a set of actions in front of our
students. A significant portion of a teacher’s work in the classroom is finding a solution
to problems as they arise. Just for example, one of the problems in the educational
system today is the reading comprehension of our students. There is really something
wrong with the way they understood on what they are reading. How would they
understand more complicated concepts if even in the simple reading text or sentences
they did not already understand? So one of the critical roles and obligations done by us
teachers is to teach reading and to teach how to comprehend. Teaching reading has
never been easy, it takes time, more interventions and remediation just to teach it with
students.

Another critical obligation of being a teacher in ensuring quality education is on

the mastery of the subject matter. It would be an insult to the students if we teachers
are not mastered with what we are teaching. This is very critical because if we teach
wrong concept of something to our learners then there might be tendency that it would
be forever in their minds, this is why we really have to study ahead, research ahead and
let us keep on practicing what we will teach.

Lastly, the critical duties and obligations of a teacher is of always being a good
role model. Our students always look up unto us and we ourselves are the one who
ensure quality education to them. Our actions, intellect, attitude and behaviors are
observed and modelled by our students, so we must be very careful on how we deal
with them for it might influence them a lot in their belief of quality education.

3. Explain “Public office is a public trust”.

For me, it means that we, public school teachers are public servants and we are
working in the public office, thus, we are entrusted with public power by people and
that trust should be for the benefit of the public and not for the benefit of
ourselves. Therefore, we should for the public interest and not for personal interest.
This is why, if we have clients/parents/learners in the school we should entertain them
with due respect and serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty and
efficiency and with justice of course.

In addition, as teachers, if we are on the contact-time of teaching our students,

let us not waste our time doing personal matters. Instead, let us make use of the time
for the learning of our students even when nobody is reminding and watching us. When
we are in school, our time is not for ourselves, it is for the students because the public
entrusted us to teach them, so let us give our service to them.

Prepared by:

GLADYS S. ESCARLOS, PhD

Subject Professor