youth unemployment rate at 19.9% compared to the male rate of 11.9%, with the exception of Samoa, at least one in four working youth expressed a desire to change their job; (e) informal employment9 is the standard condition among youth in the Asia-Pacific region; and (f) the qualifications mismatch is high among young workers in the five countries with over onehalf of young workers in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Nepal are undereducated for the work they do.10 4. In the Philippines, the World Bank reported that “there is a crisis in education—which started pre-COVID-19, but will have been made worse by COVID-19,” and “more than 80 percent of children do not know what they should know” in school.11 The report was based on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), in which the Philippines took part for the first time in 2018, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS), as well as the first cycle of the Southeast Asia Primary Learning Metrics (SEA-PLM) in 2019.12 Pisa assessed achievement and application of key knowledge and skills of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics, and science, while TIMSS gauged proficiency in mathematics and science at the fourth and eighth grades, and SEA-PLM evaluated reading, writing, and mathematical literacy, with an initial focus on Grade 5.13 Across the three assessments, poor learning results were observed among students in the Philippines, with more than 80% of them falling below minimum levels of proficiency expected for the respective grades.14 The Philippines ranked last in reading and second to the last in science and mathematics among 79 countries in Pisa, and ranked last in both mathematics and science among 58 countries in the fourth-grade assessment in TIMSS and was among the bottom half of the six countries in reading, mathematics, and writing literacy in SEA-PLM.15 In another study by the World Bank, titled “Assessing Basic Education Service Delivery in the Philippines: Public Education Expenditure Tracking and Quantitative Service Delivery Study,” issues such as limited discretionary funding, difficulties in using public funds by the schools, week transparency and accountability for fund use, low, declining and unequal local government funding to basic education, and poor record-keeping and reporting on the distribution and effectiveness of local government funding for education were observed.16 5. Ironically, key agencies, such as the Department of Education (DepEd), state universities and colleges (SUCs), local universities and colleges (LUCs), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA), have been given 9 Informal employment in the report is measured according to the guidelines recommended by the 17th International Conference of Labour Statisticians, which includes: (a) paid employees in “informal jobs,” i.e., jobs without a social security entitlement, paid annual leave, or paid sick leave; (b) paid employees in an unregistered enterprise with size classification below five employees; (c) own-account workers in an unregistered enterprise with size classification below five employees; (d) employers in an unregistered enterprise with size classification below five employees; and (e) contributing family workers. Id. at 38. 10 Id. at 2-5. 11 Ben O. de Vera, 80% of PH kids don’t know what they should know – World Bank, INQUIRER.NET, July 01, 2021, available at https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1453814/wb-80-of-ph-kids-dont-know-what-they-should-know#ixzz7WXXIYr1v (last accessed June 21, 2022). 12 Id. 13 Id. 14 Id. 15 Id. 16 The World Bank, Assessing Basic Education Service Delivery in the Philippines: Public Education Expenditure Tracking and Quantitative Service Delivery Study, (2016). 10