Professional Documents
Culture Documents
On December 20, 1863, Spain promulgated an educational decree for reforming the educational
system in the Philippines.
During the early Spanish occupation, education for the Filipino people centered on religion and
primarily for the elite, especially in the first years of Spanish colonization.
Prior to that, early Filipinos taught their children at home, focusing more on vocational skills
than academics. There were also tribal tutors, but there was no structured educational system.
With the enactment of the Educational Decree of 1863, it liberalized access to education, which
provided for the establishment of at least one primary school for boys and girls in each town
under the responsibility of the municipal government.
[No. 74.] AN ACT establishing a Department of Public Instruction in the Philippine Islands,
and appropriating forty thousand dollars ($40,000) for the organization and maintenance of a
normal, and a trade school in Manila, and fifteen thousand dollars ($15,000) for the organization
and maintenance of an agricultural school in the island of Negros for the year 1901
Batas Pambansa (BP) Blg. 232, more popularly known as the Education Act of 1982, signed
into law by then President Ferdinand Marcos on September 11, 1982. This seminal law
governs both formal and non-formal education systems in public and private schools in all
levels of instruction in the country.
The Education Act of 1982 created the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports which later
became the Department of Education, Culture and Sports (DECS) in 1987 by virtue of
Executive Order No. 117.
The Philippine Education For All (EFA) 2015 is a vision and a holistic program of reforms that
aims at improving the quality of basic education for every Filipino by 2015.