The Department of Education (DepEd) stresses through several policy issuances that the center of the Philippine basic education is the learner, particularly the child. The recent adoption of the Rights-Based Education (RBE) Framework for Philippine Basic Education underscores the duty of schools, learning centers, and offices to respect, protect, fulfill, and actively promote the full range of rights of children. The RBE Framework clarifies that the right to education goes beyond the discussion of access, but also pertains to the quality of education received by the child learners and their well-being in their learning environments.

In this regard, the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) lauds DepEd in its recent reiteration and strict implementation of its Gender-Responsive Basic Education Policy or DepEd Order No 32, s.2017 through the Memorandum from the Office of the Undersecretary for Governance and Field Operations No. 2022-02-0153. This comes after a series of reported incidents in schools where students and teachers alike were discriminated and subject to gender-based exclusion because of their gender identities and expressions.

The Gender-Responsive Basic Education Policy “seeks to enable the DepEd to undertake gender-mainstreaming in education to address both enduring and emerging gender and sexuality-related issues in basic education, to promote the protection of children from all forms of gender-related violence, abuse, exploitation, discrimination, and bullying, and to promote gender equality and non-discrimination in the workplace and within the DepEd.”

The said policy covers officials and employees of the DepEd; officials and employees of private elementary, junior, and senior high schools; and learners of public and private elementary, junior, and senior high schools, and of learning centers for Special Education and Alternative Learning Systems and laboratory schools of State Universities and Colleges, and Local Universities and Colleges.

The reiteration of the Gender-Responsive Basic Education Policy comes timely after several gender-based violence incidents were noted in schools, including transgender girls being asked to cut their hair and being mandated to wear a uniform for male students.

CHR hopes that the policy directive reduces, if not totally eliminates, gender-based violence and discrimination in schools by genuinely ensuring that education institutions remain learner-friendly and are progressively working towards of gender quality in educational outcomes.

We remind educators and education institutions that gender issues have an impact on the realisation of the right to education. Critical in understanding this dynamic is the intersectionality of issues, i.e. on how sex and gender issues are tightly connected with other social factors, such as age, class, disability, ethnicity, race, religion, and other status.

CHR looks forward to the meaningful implementation of the Gender-Responsive Basic Education Policy and all other related directives that respect, protect, and promote the rights and dignity of children and learners that will enable them to be productive citizens of the country. ###