High cost of education hurts quality of Filipino students

Cost of education in the Philippines has been rising at a faster pace than that of food for nearly a decade, hurting the overall quality and performance of Filipino students, according to the National Statistical Coordination Board. 

Romulo Virola, the secretary-general of the statistical board, on Tuesday said that prices of educational goods and services have gone up faster on the average—by 18 percentage points—compared with prices of all commodities.

With 2000 as benchmark year, Virola added that the price of education was higher by 15 percent last year.

In 2007, the difference was highest at 29.9 percentage points. In 2001, however, the disparity was only 4.2 percent.

“But isn’t expensive education a violation of the human right to education? By [its] greed, or whatever reason that drives [it] to increase fees faster than other goods and services, isn’t the private sector then denying our poor families access to good quality education? What has civil society done to address this problem?” Virola asked.

Besides the higher cost of education, he blamed the poor quality of education in the country on the skimpy budget allocated by Filipino families for the education of their members.

“Families allocate only 3 percent of their total basic expenditures for education,” Virola said.

On the average, families spent only 3.2 percent in 2000, 2.9 percent (2003) and 3.1 (2006) percent of their total basic expenditures for education.

“No wonder then that our students fare badly in the NAT [National Achievement Tests] and the NCAE [National Career Assessment Examinations]. But could poor mothers and fathers be blamed if the high cost of education ‘disincentivizes’ them from allocating more of their family budget for education?” Virola said.

He noted that the performance of students from public schools was poorer than those from privately schools in the NCAE results for 2008 and 2009.

Fourth year high school students in private schools excelled over their counterparts in public schools, scoring 4.8 percentage points higher in science, 4.6 (mathematics), 8.8 (reading comprehension) and 9.0 (verbal ability).

“Private schools are of course better funded. Thus, while government spending on education is on the rise, it may not be enough!” Virola said.

Overall, he added, fourth year high school students of school years 2008 and 2009 showed a slight decreased in performance over time.

In 2006, the statistical board said that Filipino children accounted for the largest number of the country’s poor at 14.4 million.

Particularly “worrisome,” the board added, was the deterioration of the country’s human capital with the child education index (CEI) decreasing by 0.132-index point to 0.607 in 2006 from 0.739 in 2003.

Despite this gloomy children’s education statistics, Virola said that the good news is that government spending on education has been generally increasing.

He added that share of expenditures on education from total government expenditures is rising over time from an 11.8-percent share in 2006 to 13.9 percent in 2009.

“It is definitely good to see such increase in the investments made by the government on our children, through education. But is the increase good enough?” Virola said.

Despite the rising budget for education, he pointed out that the Philippines in 2005 ranked fourth in terms of public investments in education among the five original members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)—Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

In terms of the ratio of public expenditures on education to gross domestic product (GDP), the Philippines ranked seventh among the 10 Asean member-countries—the five original members plus Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. GDP is the total value of goods and services produced in a country in a year. –Darwin G. Amojelar, Senior Reporter, Manila Times