LUCENA CITY – Department of Education Sec. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara and Quezon Gov. Angelina “Helen” Tan both expressed the need to look deeper into the mental health care of the young learners to prevent the continuous outbreak of tragic violence inside the school campuses.
Sec. Angara has urged teachers of Quezon province to build “strong communities” in the schools to root out the mental health problems of young learners saying there is a mental health epidemic among the youth today that needs to be acknowledged and looked into.
Angara spoke here on Sunday during the Quezon Educators Research Convention (QERC) as part of the celebration of National Teachers Month in which he recounted the school shooting by a Gr. 9 student at Banga National High School in South Cotabato which allegedly killed 2 students and injured 8 others last Friday.
“I urge all of us to build strong communities in our schools. Let us build from interpersonal relationship with our learners. Let’s go beyond the books. Let’s make efforts not only to know the names of our students but also their personal circumstances,” said Angara before an audience of over 5 thousand elementary and high school teachers mostly from the province’ 3rd District called Bondoc Peninsula.
Among those in the audience at the jampacked Quezon Convention Center at the Provincial Capitol Compound here aside from Gov. Tan, were 3rd Dist. Cong. Reynan Arrogancia, Board Member Meg Esguerra, and DepEd local officials led by Region 4-A Director Carlito Rocafort and Quezon Schools Division Superintendent Rommel Bautista.
Angara said teachers of the young school shooter were puzzled as he was reportedly an upright student from STEM (Science, Technology and Math) class, with good grades and with no family problem.
The young gunman, according to Angara, has written a letter in which he thanked his parents, told anyone not to blame his parents as they purportedly have done nothing wrong in bringing him up; let out his anger at his classmates who laughed at him or ignored him, or not asked how he is keeping up in school.
According to Angara, the problem is that the world now has reduced the amount of human interpersonal contact and young learners aged 13 to 16 yrs. old are most fragile and emotionally vulnerable who tend to overreact, and their part of the brain that allow them to process situations are not fully developed yet.
He then spoke about the social media that has become rampant and unregulated and the fact that the student shooter from South Cotabato and the shooter in the earlier tragic school shooting in Tacloban city are purportedly members of radical online networks.
The South Cotabato shooter was reportedly a member of “True Crime” online community while the shooter in Tacloban was a member of “764” network international community. Both online communities, said Angara, were described by the PNP as “nihilistic violent groups” who promote and celebrate violence and other negative acts of society.
“There is a mental health epidemic among our youth today. We must acknowledge it, understand it and look into the roots of it, otherwise, I hesitate to say, baka marami pang masaktan dahil iba na ang pag-iisip ng kabataan ngayon,” Angara said adding that it is a wake-up call for all of them in DepEd, to be aware of the problem and to take positive steps to address it.
Gov. Tan echoed the seriousness of the mental health problem among the young as she proposed the need for a ‘wholistic’ approach citing the launching of the provincial government mental health crisis hotline when she assumed office in 2022.
Being the principal author of the National Mental Health Act, she urged the DepEd community to look deeper into the mental health care of the young Quezonian learners and not to underestimate the problem before it gets out of hand.
While Gov. Tan was speaking, the Quezon Crisis Hotline (QCH) 0961-338-3315 was flashed on various LED screen panels strategically placed inside the convention center for all participants to see. It says: “Quezonians, hindi ka nag-iisa” (you are not alone); and “Kung may pinagdaraanan, bukas ang Quezon Crisis Hotline para makinig sayo” (If you are experiencing something bad, the QCH is open to listen to you).
The QCH, according to Gov. Tan, is assigned with hotline navigators and accessible in every municipalities and district hospitals of the province but due to limited number of experts is available only 8am to 5pm.
“All they have to do is reach out, contact the navigators, and contact numbers are flashed in every municipality,” said Tan as she expressed elation that in schools, there is an active homeroom parents-teachers interaction that serve as good avenue to help both parents and teachers in addressing the problems and concerns of young learners.
Angara, who was appointed by Pres. Bongbong Marcos Jr. in July 2024, was earlier sharing in his speech the good news about the latest result of the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2025 in which he said the Philippines has left the bottom 10 among the almost hundred participating countries that were assessed in the 3 areas of Reading, Math and Science.
The DepEd chief congratulated the teachers for raising the level of education of schoolchildren saying the Philippines is one of the 8 countries out of almost 100 PISA participants that have shown to have notably improved in the 3 domains of Reading, Mathematics and Science for grade level students.
“Let us not waste our momentum, let us build on the gains that we have achieved in PISA,” Angara said adding that with proper mediation on the young learners the reported 90% learning poverty level of students can be avoided.
He said that the education budget for 2027 has increased by 20% compared to this year and there is a record budget allocation for construction of classrooms, purchase of textbooks, computers and other needs of the schools.
Angara noted that when he assumed to head the DepEd, Gov. Tan was the among the first to lobby for the various needs of the school system in her province – for more classrooms, more teachers, more academic staff for teachers to be able to concentrate on teaching and not saddled with administrative and other matters.
For her part, Gov. Tan said since she took the reins of the provincial government in 2022 she has been prioritizing the problem of lack of school facilities and other necessities – classrooms, chairs, computers, books – doing belt-tightening measures in spending the Special Education Funds to maximise the limited budget allocation every year.
She cited her administration’s promotion of learners’ literacy and numeracy skills when she launched her project called Kid Bibo which she said is a complementation initiative of the provincial government to the efforts of DepEd and Dept. of Social Welfare and Development in their “Tara Basa” reading program for the young students.
Project Kid Bibo was launched on July 27, 2023 in Malinao Ilaya Elem. School in Atimonan led by Tan and Quezon school division superintendent Bautista.
The provincial government has adopted learning materials and funded through the Provincial School Board Special Education Funds the “Unang Hakbang sa Pagbasa” which were distributed to 33,468 Gr. 1 learners across 781 schools in the whole province.
Quezon 3rd District Rep. Arrogancia said that with the big DepEd budget in 2027 he expressed assurance to address the school buildings shortage in the 12 towns of Bondoc Peninsula.
