Bill would let students in arrears take exams

MANILA, Philippines—A party-list representative on Sunday urged Congress to pass a law that would penalize schools that bar students from taking their exams because they had not fully paid their school bills.

Kabataan party-list Representative Raymond Palatino said the policy of “no permit, no exam” of many educational institutions should be criminalized in order to protect poor students from “exorbitant” school fees.

“Educational institutions have become mostly run as profit-making enterprises with their routine imposition of higher or new school fees, unmindful of the economic situation of the students the schools are supposed to serve.” Palatino said in a statement.

Palatino has authored House Bill 6799, which imposes a fine of not more than P50,000 and the “suspension and/or cancellation of the permits of the offending schools.”

Under the bill, students with delinquent fees would be allowed to take their exams but shall be subject to the right of the school to withhold their clearance to graduate until all delinquencies were fully paid.

“It is the state’s obligation to intervene and ensure that our young people’s right to education is not compromised due to financial difficulties,” he said.

Palatino noted that higher education in the country had remained “largely inaccessible to poor students due to commercialization.”

“This bill seeks to protect deserving students from prematurely halting their studies due to the understandable inability to pay exorbitant school fees on time,” he said. –Philip Tubeza, Philippine Daily Inquirer