Old Woes
Reforms in the Philippine education system need to be done with a long-term vision
By Nicole L. Paterno

It used to be that Philippine education was talked about with much pride and optimism – quality teachers, quality students, both in public and private schools. These days, people can only talk of the lack of a lot of things in public schools – books, classrooms, high caliber teachers – as the student population continue to rise. Year after year, the statistics are being updated, but none of the changes reflect a considerable improvement in the already deteriorating quality of Philippine education, a scenario that is so far apart from the glory of yesteryears.

Impoverished State
This inadequacy in education has always been linked to poverty. The government is wanting in funds to sufficiently equip public schools, just as poor families are finding it harder and harder to find ways of financing the education of their children.

Rates of student dropouts continually increase from both the private and public schools. In school year 2001-2002, the rate of dropouts figured at 9.0% at the elementary school level, while the dropout rate in the secondary level was at 10.6%. Comparing this to the dropout data of the Department of Education (DepEd) for school year 2000-2001, this was a 1.3% increase in the elementary level and a 1.1% increase in the high school level.

The most cited reason for the significant dropout rate is the financial constraint experienced by families near and below the poverty line to send and retain their children in school. Tuition and enrollment fees are increasingly expensive nowadays.

The country is also facing the reality of losing good and qualified teachers, both in the private and public schools, because of better compensation and work opportunities overseas. While there still remain very good public school teachers who opt to stay in the service, it cannot be denied that many others are lacking in competency and training. Couple this with classes that now reach an average of 70 students each session, the lack of learning materials, and the sorry state of school buildings and classrooms – if at all available – it is not surprising to see ill-equipped graduates.

There is a need to upgrade public school furniture

The Needs
How the DepEd under the Arroyo administration will reform the educational system in her remaining months in office is something the public should look into closely. It is in reforming the educational system that the economic development of the country can be made sustainable over a long period of time.

President Arroyo continues to emphasize her administration’s goal to improve and deliver quality education. Concrete steps in achieving quality education entails the construction of schools in every barangay nationwide, the provision of textbooks to meet the 1:1 student-textbook ratio, and the specialized training to be undergone by all teachers.

Jumpstarting this effort is refining the basic education curriculum (BEC) in all schools. The BEC contains core subjects of Math, Science, English, Filipino and Makabayan – consisting of Social Studies, Technology and Livelihood Education, Music, Arts, Physical Education and Health, and Values Education. The effectiveness of this new curriculum has yet to be evaluated, having been introduced only last schoolyear. As of schoolyear 2002-2003, DepEd was able to train 583,178 public and private school teachers based on the new BEC.

The Arroyo administration also pledged to build and complete 1,612 new school buildings in the same number of barangays by 2004. From July 2001 to July 2002, 555 school buildings have been constructed nationwide, with the help of other government agencies and the private sector. More school buildings will be built soon, with pledges coming from private institutions and government officials.

To fill the need for new public school teachers, DepEd conducted tests and interviews in certain provinces around the country. With only 5,000 new teachers hired for schoolyear 2003-2004, the public school system is still facing a 77.0% teacher backlog despite the fact that Congress allotted P1.98 billion pesos to create and accommodate 20,000 new teachers.

Professionalizing the organization
Looking at the brighter side, one major development in the DepEd structure is the improvement of its payroll system. Public school teachers, who used to receive their monthly income in the form of cheques, are now able to get it through ATMs. The shift to a chequeless payroll system is expected to minimize corruption, which is very likely to happen with the daily processing of some 18,000 cheques for teachers’ salaries.

On the issue of procurement, the DepEd is moving towards strengthening and institutionalizing procurement through a department-wide procurement unit, which adheres to local procurement standards set by R.A. 9184 (Government Procurment and Reform Act) and international procurement standards mandated by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

This will allow more transparency in bidding procedures, the reduction or improvement of the procurement processing period from nine to twelve months to four months, adopting contract-procedures based on the agreed delivery schedule, and centralized bidding of contracts consistent with foreign-assisted project rules.

Private sector partnerships
The role of civil society in upgrading the quality of Philippine education is crucial because in the end, it will really be the society at large that will be its beneficiaries. Business entities are seeing the need to address the issue more than ever, as reflected in the education projects that they are initiating to assist the government.

DepEd has existing programs that allow private sector participation such as the Adopt-a-School Program. Through this partnership, chosen schools receive assistance in different forms – infrastructure maintenance and construction, teaching and skills development, provision of textbooks, reference materials, and learning tools, provision of information technology and laboratory equipment, food and nutrition supplement, and other types of assistance benefactors would like to donate.

Another noteworthy private sector partnership DepEd went into is the National Textbook and Desks Delivery Program – a transparency initiative to ensure that textbooks and desks are delivered on time and received by the beneficiary schools. Because of controversies and corrupt activities surrounding the delivery of textbooks and desks, the Department of Education enlisted the help of the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL) and other civil society groups to monitor the whole process of consignment and receipt of textbooks and desks in 6,000 areas nationwide.

Over and Over
Different year, same old woes – that is how it has been for Philippine education for a number of years now. It will be unfair to put all the blame on government, especially since the effort to deliver the goods and services needed has always been there. Nonetheless, policies are not implemented with enough foresight, thus resulting in the continued deterioration of the country’s educational system.

There are a lot of policies and programs the DepEd is implementing to improve the development of Philippine education. However, changes in administrations have affected the effectiveness of these policies and programs. To efficiently address the lack of continuity in government efforts to supply the schools’ material needs and to upgrade the quality of education, there is a need to have a vision of what the country is aiming for and a wider perspective in planning for the attainment of that vision.

The solution to the slow decay in Philippine education can not just lie in mitigating temporary ailments such as the provision of enough material resources to public educational institutions. It is in re-examining the competencies of Filipino students and adjusting the education curriculum to invoke the needed changes. This way, catching up with the fast improving education system of neighboring countries will not be as tough.