21 million students troop to school today

MANILA, Philippines – Some 21.05 million students troop back to public schools today as classes open for school year 2010-2011.

Education Secretary Mona Valisno said some 3.26 million students are also expected to go back to private schools today.

Valisno said the Department of Education (DepEd) is ready to welcome students in over 59,000 public pre-schools, elementary and high schools.

“We’re all set, but we’re really hoping for sunny skies today,” Valisno told The STAR.

While she was confident that public schools had prepared for rains and floods, she said the opening of classes would be less stressful for school principals and teachers if the weather was good.

“Our public schools have prepared for the rainy weather during our Brigada Eskwela Week, so we’re not so worried,” Valisno said.

She called on more than 400,000 public school teachers to step up their preparations again for an orderly school opening, just like what they did in the generally successful May 10 automated polls and the 2010 census.

“I salute our teachers and I call on them to be heroes once again when they welcome our more than 24 million school children when they go back to school,” Valisno said.

She brushed off grim forecasts for the public education system for school year 2010-2011 amid challenges of lack of classrooms, textbooks and school furniture faced by public school children yearly.

“Things are improving. The morale is up among public school teachers,” she said.

Valisno said with the teachers’ pay upgrade through the Salary Standardization Law enacted early this year, public school teachers will now enjoy a decent salary.

“The salary for our entry-level teachers has gone up to P16,370 from P9,466. For our Master Teachers III, it is now more than P33,000. Our teachers now have a good salary, higher even than teachers in private schools,” she said.

“There may be some problems on shortages of resources but we have to tackle these things with the help of everyone,” Valisno said.

DepEd placed the number of public schools, including the recently established pre-schools set up with the Early Childhood Care and Development Coordinating Council, at 59,045.

The department now has 37,967 public elementary schools, 5,237 high schools, and 15,841 pre-schools.

Valisno said the total inventory of classrooms is at 429,390, with 3,616 classrooms still being completed to reach the target ratio of 1:45 or one classroom for 45 students.

Aside from more than 21.5 million public school students, about half of private school students would be subsidized by the DepEd through the Government Assistance to Private Education.

Under the program, students will be given P5,000 to P10,000 vouchers or financial support to stay in private schools and prevent their migration to public schools.

DepEd budget cut

But a “cruel” cut in the annual budget of DepEd for this year by the outgoing administration of President Arroyo would aggravate shortages of basic resources such as classrooms, textbooks, and school desks and furniture, said the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT).

“Back to school, back to the same old problems which will be worse because of the budget cut for DepEd for this year,” ACT national chairman Antonio Tinio said.

“Malacañang imposed a P1.62-billion reduction, from P174.46 billion in 2009 to P172.84 billion this year. This is the last thing our ailing public education system needs,” Tinio said.

Yesterday, ACT held a rally in Mendiola, Manila to protest the Arroyo government’s failure to give adequate fund support and provide basic education to millions of Filipino school children.

Tinio noted that for the incoming school year 2010-2011, there would be a shortage of 54,060 teachers, 4,538 principals, and 6,473 head teachers; 61,343 classrooms, 816,291 seats, and 113,051 water and sanitation facilities.

The DepEd also needs an additional P400 million to address the textbook shortage, he said.

ACT noted that while there was an increase in the budget for salaries and benefits of teachers, this was offset by significant cuts in maintenance and other operating expenses and capital outlay, which includes the budget for classroom construction and acquisition of school equipment.

Tinio said a check on the 2010 general appropriations act showed that a huge portion of the national government’s funds continues to be allocated to debt payment. –Rainier Allan Ronda (The Philippine Star) with Helen Flores