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Filipinos have
a deep regard for education, which they view as a primary avenue for upward
social and economic mobility. From the onset of United States colonial rule, with
its heavy emphasis on mass public education, Filipinos internalized the
American ideal of a democratic society in which individuals could get ahead
through attainment of a good education. Middle-class parents make tremendous
sacrifices in order to provide secondary and higher education for their
children.
But now, the
state of the educational system in the Philippines
is a great cause for worry. We used to produce students who were well-rounded
and ready for the challenges of the real world. According to a study, for every
10 children who start their primary education, only 6
go on to continue with their secondary education, and 4 will manage to enter
college. What happened? Other countries used to send their students to the Philippines to
learn, now they've overtaken us and are the experts. Isn't that frustrating?
It is said that, literacy
rate in the Philippines
has improved a lot over the last few years. This is attributed to the increase
in both the number of schools built and the level of enrolment. The number of
schools grew rapidly in all three levels - elementary, secondary, and tertiary.
There was an increase of 58 percent in the elementary schools and 362 percent
in the tertiary schools. For the same period, enrolment in all three levels
also rose by 120 percent. More than 90 percent of the elementary schools and 60
percent of the secondary schools are publicly owned. However, only 28 percent
of the tertiary schools are publicly owned.
A big percentage of
tertiary-level students enroll in and finish commerce and business management courses. But, the difference between the number of enrollees
in the commerce and business courses and in the engineering and technology
courses may be small - 29.2 percent for commerce and business and 20.3 percent
for engineering and technology. However, the gap widens in terms of the number
of graduates for the said courses.
On gender distribution, female
students have very high representation in all three levels. At the elementary
level, male and female students are almost equally represented. But female
enrollment exceeds that of the male at the secondary and tertiary levels. Also,
boys have higher rates of failures, dropouts, and repetition in both elementary
and secondary levels.
Aside from the numbers
presented above, which are impressive, there is also a need to look closely and
resolve the following important issues: 1) quality of education 2)
affordability of education 3) government budget for education; and 4) education
mismatch.
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1. Quality - There was a
decline in the quality of the Philippine education, especially at the
elementary and secondary levels. For example, the results of standard tests
conducted among elementary and high school students, as well as in the National
College of Entrance Examination for college students,
were way below the target mean score
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2. Affordability - There is also a big di sparity in educational
achievements across social groups. For example, the socioeconomically
disadvantaged students have higher dropout rates, especially in the elementary
level. And most of the freshmen students at the tertiary level come from relatively well-off families.
3.
Budget - The Philippine
Constitution has mandated the goverment to allocate the highest proportion of
its budget to education. However, the Philippines still has one of the
lowest budget allocations to education among the ASEAN countries.
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4. Mismatch - There is a large proportion of
"mismatch" between training and actual jobs. This is the major
problem at the tertiary level and it is also the cause of the existence of a
large group of educated unemployed or underemployed.
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There are reforms proposed
such as;
1. Upgrade the teachers' salary scale. Teachers have been underpaid; thus there
is very little incentive for most of them to take up advanced trainings.
2. Amend the current system of budgeting for education across regions, which is
based on participation rates and units costs. This clearly favors the more
developed regions. There is a need to provide more allocation to lagging
regions to narrow the disparity across regions.
3. Stop the current practice of subsidizing state universities and colleges to
enhance access. This may not be the best way to promote equity. An expanded
scholarship program, giving more focus and priority to the poor, should be more
equitable.
4. Get all the leaders in business and industry to become actively involved in
higher education; this is aimed at addressing the mismatch problem. In
addition, carry out a selective admission policy, i.e., installing mechanisms
to reduce enrollment in oversubscribed courses and promoting enrollment in
undersubscribed ones.
5. Develop a rationalized apprenticeship program with heavy inputs from the
private sector. Furthermore, transfer the control of technical training to
industry groups which are more attuned to the needs of business and industry.
In
the analysis of Engr. Herman M. Lagon according to him; Reform efforts have
been relatively successful in places where “a determined commitment from local
communities, parents and teachers” has been obtained, backed up by “continuing
dialogue and various forms of outside financial, technical or professional
assistance.” Former Education Secretary Edilberto de Jesus, in a seminar
conducted in Ateneo de Manila University last July, 2009 which this reporter
incidentally attended, commented that all initiatives to improve the quality of
education are laudable, but they have to be at a sufficient scale to make
significant change. In this context, decentralization makes a lot of sense. Our
collective experience with forming local education alliances shows that
organizing communities—including the teachers and school personnel—for
school-level reform is a very viable and cost-effective education quality
initiative.
It
is said that learning begins with teachers, and empowered teachers and school
heads are at the heart of genuine education reform. It is not enough that our
teachers just go along for the ride in our drive toward quality education. They
must lead the way in preparing our children and young people for lifelong
learning. While doing this, it is just common sense to say that they must be
given enough opportunity, tools, and motivation to achieve this.
Other social issues that
our government should look into:
1. Development
of Instructional Materials particularly in the core subjects.
Teachers must be trained and be given financial support in the development of
much Instructional Materials like modules, standardized validated rating,
achievement and diagnostic tests via qualitative ones. Books backlog has
been reduced tremendously but text books don’t contain enough exercises and
testing materials that teachers could use in their daily instruction. As
a result, most of the time, the teacher is required to write all the exercises
on the board taking a lot of time or not at all.
2. Teachers'
Training and Development. It has been observed that most of
education graduates except of course the graduates of institutions designated
as CHED center of excellence have a lot of deficiencies particularly in the
immediate grasp and knowledge of the content areas.
3. Palakasan
System, Utang na Loob, Pakikisama System the negative side of these all
must totally be eradicated by professionalizing all the ranks from the top to
bottom just like the corporate world does. Still, much of those who are
getting promoted don't necessarily have the guts to become an educational
leader. Many are just after the salary increase and most of all of the
prestige that goes with being a school manager! The worst, having no real
concern and dedication to initiate reforms for the betterment of the system.
4. The
Multi-grade System of Education as a viable alternative to depopulated
areas must be strengthened by providing the teachers and all the schools with
enough resources just like each counterparts on other parts of the world
experience.
5. Performance-Based
Management and Assessment must not only be a by-word but an actual rule
to all. In other words, strengthened accountability of all. In this
way, they could recognize the deserving and possibly replace those who don't by
the deserving ones.
6. Establishment
of evaluative tool or continuous impact assessment of trainings made
and a strict standards and guidelines for those who will undergo free trainings
with pay to maximize the resources that will be made available.
7. Outstanding
teacher practitioners must be hired or given an opportunity to teach and share
their knowledge and expertise in the existing TEI's so that the
products of these institutions will really be professionally equipped once they
are hired as teachers.
8. DepEd
must be depoliticized by trying to install department secretaries who rose
from the ranks instead of the regular trend of installing political
appointees under the auspices of the office of the republic of the Philippines.
It
must be impressed upon us all that this issue does not only pertain to the
three-core subjects, or to academic freedom, or to the accessibility of
education, but to the aspirations, visions and ambitions of the Filipino people
in making this land at par with, or more progressive, than other countries. What
we want is to emancipate endless quicksand of poverty and apathy- not for the
expanding global empires.
Education- this is not the only concern of our government, education officials,
academic sector and the industry. Real education is everybody’s concern.
