Group wants more concrete educational reform

The Philippine Business for Education’s (PBEd) Education Nation coalition on Wednesday presented a 10-point education reform agenda that the next president should adopt to lift the quality of education in the country.

“So far, we have heard only very general, motherhood statements about education from the presidentiables. We want [the next president] to make education the priority, not just one among several priorities,” Chito Salazar, PBEd president said.

According to the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, there is a “real danger that the country will fail to achieve universal primary education by 2015.”

The report also said that education indicators for the Philippines are “below what might be expected for a country at its income level”

This dismal state of the education sector is already affecting the supply of labor.

Sylvia Mempin Duque, vice president and director for corporate human resources of the Alcantara group, said that while there are many available jobs, especially in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry, some college graduates are lacking in good communication skills. The current hiring rate in the local BPO sector is between 3 percent and 6 percent of applicants.

“There are thousands of graduates who do not meet the needs of industry,” she said.

Because of the skills mismatch between graduates and employment prospects the group is calling for:

• Promotion of academic excellence, by developing globally benchmarked standards of performance for both teachers and students, and establishing a credible, reliable and transparent monitoring, assessment and evaluation system by an independent and competent institution;
• Community involvement in education by mandating the Department of Education (DepEd) and schools to work with local communities and allocate resources for capability-building programs for community groups;
• Ensuring access to education for all Filipinos by continuing the conditional cash transfers program for the poor; and tapping nonformal education and alternative learning;
• Building transparency and accountability among stakeholders—including schools, local governments, communities and parents;
• Providing adequate resources, by increasing the national budget for pre-school and basic education to 4 percent of the gross domestic product; and by combating corruption in the allocation and disbursement of education resources;
• Empowering teachers through training and development programs, and provision of incentives;
• Enhancing basic education by extending it to 12 years; and establishing a universal pre-school system;
• Supporting the private education system through public-private partnerships, and the establishment of government-supported loans and grants for students in private institutions;
• Strengthening higher education by allocating more resources for centers for excellence and providing more scholarships and loans (such as a “study now, pay when employed” scheme), rather than continuing subsidies for low-quality state and local universities and colleges;
• And, developing alternative learning systems, by forming a multi-stakeholder body that would measure and assess alternative learning systems, as well as accredit and recognize graduates for employment.

PBEd, composed of businessmen and educators, would officially present this education agenda before presidential contenders during the Third National Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (Cocopea) Congress next month. –BEN ARNOLD O. DE VERA Reporter, Manila Times