MANILA — Senator Loren Legarda led a Senate public hearing tackling six priority measures aimed at updating governance in higher and technical education, improving professional standards and quality assurance, and widening scholarship access for Filipino students.

Legarda, who chairs the Senate Committee on Higher, Technical and Vocational Education and serves as co-chair of the Second Congressional Commission on Education, presided over discussions covering proposed reforms for key education agencies and institutions.

Among the measures taken up were proposals to strengthen the charter of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), modernize the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), and improve governance of local universities and colleges (LUCs) and state universities and colleges (SUCs). Lawmakers also discussed bills expanding the Presidential Merit Scholarship Program and establishing a Philippine Professional Standards and Quality Assurance System.

Legarda stressed that existing frameworks for CHED and TESDA have become outdated, noting they were created more than 30 years ago.

“The fundamental problem is institutional. CHED’s legal mandate has not kept pace with the sector’s growth, diversification, or the policy commitments the Philippine government has made in subsequent decades,” Legarda said.

Findings presented by EDCOM II pointed to structural issues in LUCs, including uneven faculty compensation and gaps in compliance with CHED standards. The commission said financially constrained local government units face difficulty attracting qualified instructors due to lower pay, which contributes to persistent concerns over education quality.

Proposed measures include granting SUCs varying levels of autonomy based on performance, requiring certification for members of governing boards, and creating a leadership academy for higher education to improve succession planning.

For TESDA, the modernization proposal seeks to reorganize its governing structure by replacing its board with a board of advisers, expanding the agency’s secretariat to include enterprise-based and community-level skills programs, and requiring impact assessments for scholarship initiatives.

Meanwhile, the proposed quality assurance system aims to align the functions of CHED, TESDA, and the Professional Regulation Commission to address overlapping mandates and outdated professional laws that limit curriculum updates.

Legarda said the committee will continue refining the proposals through technical working groups, emphasizing that the reforms are anchored on improving governance, accountability, and access to education, particularly for students from low-income families.