President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday night said he wanted his successor to be more competent than him so the issues he was unable to solve during his term could be addressed better.
“We will just work on it. I hope the next administration will be more competent than us now, more bright than us now, and more productive than us now,” Duterte said.
Duterte made the statement as he groaned at how the country’s development was stunted by its supposed lack of resources.
“Mahirap lang talaga kasi tayo. We are a third-world country, classified as one. Ang mahirap sa atin is always the constraint of money,” he said during his weekly address.
“Kung may pera sanang marami, then we could have upgraded everything to compete or reach parity with the other first-class countries,” he added.
Duterte was addressing the World Bank report that about 80 percent of Filipino students were not as proficient as they should have been for their grade levels and the apology the institution had issued following criticisms from the Philippine government officials.
Though Duterte acknowledged the country’s shortcomings in the education sector, he called for more accurate assessments of the country’s systems.
“I hope a more accurate report based on the latest data will be made. I’m sure that the Department of Education is working on a new set of data for them so that they can correct the figures and data inputs,” Duterte said.
Education Secretary Leonor Briones earlier demanded an apology for the World Bank’s “insulting” report, which she said made use of old and inaccurate data.
The World Bank has apologized for its report.
“We deeply regret that the report on education was inadvertently published earlier than scheduled and before the Department of Education had enough chance to provide inputs,” the World Bank said in a statement. John Ezekiel J. Hirro