SENATE, Pasay City — The Second Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom II) has called on the Department of Education (DepEd), the Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) to update the guidelines on the use of the Special Education Fund to address the gaps in Republic Act (RA) 11650, or the Inclusive Education Act.

Accordingly, EdCom II cited that the said gaps have caused several concerns in the country's educational system, particularly in hampering its full implementation due to the need for specialists in different fields.

Prior to this, EdCom II co-chairman Senator Sherwin 'Win' Gatchalian has been seeking increased completion rates among learners under the Alternative Learning System (ALS) after EdCom II findings showed several disparities, prompting the administration senator to ask DepEd to address the gaps in the ALS law’s implementation and increase completion rates among its learners.

EdCom II also called on the Department of Health (DoH) to help address the need for more specialized healthcare workers to fully implement RA 11650, which was established to ensure a comprehensive policy of inclusion for learners with disabilities, though its implementation has encountered several delays.

Despite the Implementing Rules and Regulations (IRR) only being published in December last year, DepEd has begun converting 32 Special Education (SpEd) Centers into Inclusive Learning Resource Centers (ILRCs), with 12 being partially functional.

However, the full operationalization of these ILRCs have been affected due to challenges in staffing the multidisciplinary teams required to support learners with disabilities. Under the law, ILRCs will hire development pediatricians, occupational therapists, speech therapists, psychologists, and other specialists who are essential in diagnosing disabilities and designing interventions.

Moreover, it was pointed out that the implementation of RA 11650 is reliant on specialized health professionals who can address the different needs of learners with disabilities, stressed by EdCom II's other co-chairperson, Pasig City representative Roman Romulo, who stated that the importance of experts is “the establishment of the Multidisciplinary Team composed of representatives from DepEd, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) as well as various therapists who can cater to learners with special needs.”

Romulo added that "this need for specialists is made even more urgent by the shortage in the national health workforce, which in a 2022 the Department of Health estimated a lack of 194,000 health workers.
“There is a need for specialists. We need these specialists and therapists. They play crucial roles in identifying learners with special needs and crafting the necessary support to ensure these students can fully participate and benefit from inclusive education,” he enthused.

Within the school system, the shortage of health professionals is just as dire. DepEd Order No. 19, series of 2016, sets the standard ratio at one nurse for every 5,000 students. However, the current reality falls short, with the actual ratio at one nurse for every 7,624 students, requiring nurses to be stationed at division offices and rotate across multiple schools. The ratio for dentists is even more concerning, with only one dentist available for every 46,000 learners.