NP: Hunger, poverty hinder youth education

CEBU, Philippines – Nacionalista Party senatorial candidate Gilbert Remulla said lingering poverty and hunger hamper the country’s goal to provide access to primary education for millions of school-age children despite the existing law on free elementary and high school education.

He said the assessment of the United Nations Development Program on the Philippines’ performance in achieving the Millennium Development Goals showed the country is performing very badly in the goal that seeks to achieve universal primary education.

“The assessment of the UNDP showed that the government’s failure to address the worsening poverty and hunger situation of more than 47 million Filipinos has also failed to help school-age children finish primary education,” said Remulla, in a press statement sent to The FREEMAN yesterday.

The UNDP assessment, Remulla said, shows that the Philippines has an 84.6 percent net enrolment ratio in primary education in 1990. The goal is to achieve a 100 percent net enrolment for primary and secondary education.

But the UNDP figures showed that the enrolment ratio moved to only 84.8 percent by 2007.

Remulla noted that the net indicator on the proportion of pupils who enter Grade 1 and reach Grade 6 also performed poorly. In 1990, the number of pupils entering Grade 1 and finishing Grade 6 was at 69.7 percent.

The government set a target of 100 percent on the proportion of Grade 1 reaching Grade 6 by 2015. But in 2007, the UNDP assessment showed that the government only reached 75.3 percent.

Remulla added that government interventions such as school feeding and nutrition programs as well as providing a kilo of rice for each pupil in public schools every week all seemed to fail as the root cause of poverty and hunger among families of these schoolchildren has not been addressed.

The UNDP mid-term assessment of the MDG goals for the Philippines also showed that the government has failed to improve in the primary completion rate for children in elementary and secondary levels.

The completion rate in primary education in 1990 was at 64.2 percent and the government has set the goal of achieving a 100 percent completion rate by 2015.

But the UNDP believes that the government similarly performed poorly in this indicator when it registered only 73.1 percent in completion rate in 2007.

Remulla said the UNDP report also showed that the government under the Arroyo administration failed to improve literacy among the youth aged 15 to 24.

The literacy rate in the Philippines’ youth sector was already at 96.6 percent in 1990 but despite setting the 100 percent goal on literacy rate indicator by 2015, figures remained at 96.6 percent in 2003, Remulla added.

The UNDP assessment also showed that children in rural and remote provinces have the least chances of finishing primary education due to the high number of incomplete school buildings and incidence of child labor. — Mitchelle L. Palaubsanon/BRP   FREEMAN NEWS)