Senators decided to pursue the reinstatement of the mandatory Reserved Officers Training Corps (ROTC) program at the collegiate level, instead of incorporating it into the senior high school (SHS) curriculum.
Senator Sherwin Gatchalian stated during a joint hearing of the Committees on Higher, Technical, and Vocational Education, National Defense and Security, Peace, Unification, and Reconciliation, and Finance that the Department of Education (DepEd) should instead concentrate on dealing with the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly the decline in the proficiency of SHS students in English, Math, and Science.
Gatchalian, the chair of the Committee on Basic Education, expressed alarm over the DepEd data showing that 51 percent of enrollees in 2020, or over 1.4 million kids, left before graduating SHS in 2022.
“This is actually a much pressing problem to solve by DepEd and also by our country,” Gatchalian said.
He said the ROTC must be reinstated at the college level because students are already being trained through the National Service Training Program (NSTP).
“Those who want to be trained in ROTC are already being trained. So, we just need to expand it. By expanding it, obviously we also need a budget to do that and those are the things that we can discuss here at the committee level,” he said.
He claimed that because students are already receiving training under the National Service Training Program (NSTP), the ROTC must be reestablished at the college level.
The Armed Forces of the Philippines estimate that the cost of establishing an ROTC program at SHS is PHP9.2 billion.
The hearing’s moderator, Senator Ronald Dela Rosa, agreed with a request to change the Reservist Act so that individuals who are unable to attend college must sign up for it.
“It’s obvious that malaki pa ang kakailanganin ng project kapag doon natin i-implement sa Grades 11 and 12 dahil (the project will need a large amount if we implement it in Grades 11 and 12 because we will) start from scratch, from zero, walang ROTC program ang DepEd whereas ang CHED may ongoing na silang (DepEd has no ROTC program whereas CHED has an existing) ROTC program, albeit not mandatory, under NSTP,” said Dela Rosa.
