Press Release
August 13, 2011

ANGARA SEEKS CLOSER COLLABORATION
ON NATIONAL S&T STRATEGIES

In a recent TV appearance, Senator Edgardo J. Angara urged government, the private sector and the academe to jointly craft strategies that would boost the country's science and technology (S&T) capacity for national development.

Angara also reiterated his call for the creation of "innovation clusters" or Public-Private Partnerships (PPP's).

"In the Philippines, we forget one very crucial thing about science--it is a very collaborative, cooperative endeavor. We have to meet in a biennial or annual summit to discuss our S&T agenda. We all have to work closely together to determine what the country should focus on in the next two years," said Angara.

Angara, chair of the Senate Committee on Science and Technology, added that without innovations generated by research and development (R&D), education and training, any society will deteriorate.

Angara pointed out that the country ranks 91st out of the 125 economies surveyed in the Global Innovation Index 2011 made by the INSEAD Business School.

"We are low in terms of innovations and inventions because of our weak foundations in Math and Science. Our students perform very poorly in the areas that matter," said Angara.

According to data from the Department of Education, 2nd year high school students who took the National Achievement Test (NAT) for SY 2009 - 2010 had achievement rates of around 40 percent for Mathematics and 44 percent in Science.

Achievement rates or mean percentage scores are the ratios between the number of correctly answered items and the total number of items in the test.

"But this does not mean we are lacking in creativity or innovativeness. We simply lack the opportunity to use our abilities in a purposive and concerted manner--an opportunity that government should provide," said Angara.

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