Sorrow in our schools

Last week’s pronouncement of President-elect Benigno Aquino III that he will identify “the real” problems hounding Filipinos in order to map the present status of the country may as well be answered by the Department of Education with its litany of woes as it leads this Tuesday the opening of the school system for 2010-2011.

Ask officials what the main problems are, and they will invariably tick off lack of classrooms and of teachers. The department also has this proposal to address the problem:  a “zero backlog” budget,  to improve the quality of education in the country.

Still, as anyone familiar with the chronic problems of Philippine education would know, the funding is a basic, but not all-encompassing, problem. In short, it is a problem as well of vision—given the perennial gap between the national development policy and the educational system that produces the labor side of the equeation—and of human resources and political will.

Addressing the real problem in the department is possible, according to DepEd officials, by allocating as much as 4 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2011.

“If the incoming administration wants to eliminate the backlog such as in classrooms and teachers, the budget we will present for next year will be able to address [that],”

DepEd Undersecretary for Finance and Administration Manaros Boransing said at a briefing in Manila on Thursday.

Earlier, DepEd Assistant Secretary and spokeman Jonathan Malaya said they will seek a 105-percent budget increase in 2011 compared to this year’s allocation.

This year, DepEd was allocated P172.84 billion, P1 billion lower than the previous year’s P174 billion. Of this amount, P141 billion goes to personnel services, P22 billion to the maintenance and operating expenses and P12 billion to capital outlay.

It originally requested a budget of more than P190 billion to plug shortages in classrooms, teachers, textbooks and other equipment.

Boransing said that they will present their proposal of a zero-backlog budget when Aquino meets officials of DepEd.

He noted that currently the national government is allocating only 2 percent of the country’s GDP to the education sector, a far cry from the 6 percent called for by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco).

Aside from the usual shortages in physical facilities, materials and teachers, DepEd is also confronted by the problems pertaining to the participation rate. In the last two years, the participation rate in the elementary and secondary levels stood at 85 percent and 61 percent,respectively.

“This shows that 15 percent are not enrolled in the elementary level and close to 40 percent in the secondary level,” Boransing said, tracing part of the problem to the current education crisis. This year, DepEd estimates that as many as 60,000 students have moved to the public schools from the private school sector, unable to cope with soaring tuition.

Yet even in the public schools where free education is mandated up to high school by the Constitution, the dropout rate is a problem. That has been traced by experts to a combination of factors: in the rural areas, to children being part of the work force in the farms at certain times of the year, or simply because they aren’t fed enough to withstand the rigors of walking one, even two hours to schools daily; and in the cities, to their needing to do odd jobs to help unemployed parents, or worse, be lured by the nefarious influence of vice or petty crime. The DepEd aims to cut the dropout rate in the country’s more than 44,000 public schools to 9 percent this school year.

In school year 2009-2010, the department said there is an increase in the participation rates in the elementary from 85.1 percent in school year 2008-2009 to 86.5 percent in that school year, while in the secondary level, the rates also saw a marked increase from 60.7 percent in school year 2008-2009 to 65.8 percent in school year 2009-2010.

The cohort survival rates in schools is likewise a problem. Education experts have pointed out that out of 100 students, only 66 will finish elementary education, 42 will finish high school, and only 25 will go to college.

Remedial measures

To ensure the maximum number of enrollees, DepEd has ordered principals and teachers to accept students even with incomplete documents. If problems of enrollment as shown in TV newscasts last week were any indication, however, the problem may be more complicated. In Qeuzon City, for instance, two big public schools have had to turn away students who don’t reside in their so-called “catchment areas” for the simple reason that allowing in too many students would wreak problems of congestion, not to mention dilute quality of teaching as mentors have to take in more students than they can reasonably supervise.

The DepEd, meanwhile, admitted that it is far from achieving the ideal international classroom-to-student ratio, adding that the country needs to build more than 50,000 classrooms to add to the existing ones to reach the goal.

Education Secretary Mona Valisno said this is one of the reasons DepEd will be asking the next administration to give more funds to the department as it races to close the gap between the increasing number of enrollees every year and the number of classrooms to accommodate them.

“To achieve the ideal international ratio of 1:35, we will need more than 50,000 additional classrooms. We are asking for a bigger budget in 2011 to close this gap.  We are asking for some 52,660 under next year’s budget,” Valisno said.

Data provided by the DepEd-Physical Facilities and Schools Engineering Division (DepEd-PFSED) showed construction is ongoing for 3,613 classrooms to add to the 429,390 existing classrooms nationwide. An undetermined number of classrooms and schools damaged by fire and typhoons in 48 sites are also being repaired; but many more could no longer be repaired in time for June 15 because of funding problems.

The department is setting its sights on 10,000 new classrooms before the year ends.

The current classroom-to-student ratio stands at 1:45.

In all, some 23.43 million students will go into the system this year—20.17 million or 86 percent in public schools, and the rest in private institutions. The incoming grade 1 pupils for both public and private schools number 3.15 million; and for freshmen high school, 1.71 million.

Data gaps

But militant student and youth groups contested DepEd’s claims. They insist that data they gathered showed the average classroom-to-student ratio in elementary and high schools, in the National Capital Region alone, is 1:85; the number of new teachers needed is 49,699; the classrooms, chairs and textbook shortages are 57, 930, 3.48 million and 34.7 million, respectively.

Antonio Tinio, national chairman of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers,  said DepEd is facing 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 this school year.

It will also need some P400 million to address just the textbook shortage. According to Tinio, to resolve these myriad of problems, the government needs to boost the DepEd budget by as much as P91 billion.

Balik-Eskwela

Meanwhile, until that hoped-for meeting with a new President happens, the DepEd must pull the entire system through this year’s school-year, and it in fact boasts that its “Balik-Eskwela” program has accounted for all problems.

DepEd said schools suffering from minor damage have been cleaned up with the help of local governments, private business and volunteers under the Brigada Eskwela program. Some classrooms being built from private-sector funds are being rushed. Some private schools are offering to government the use of their vacant rooms for a “minimal fee.”

The DepEd continues to implement, meanwhile, the “Gastpe” or Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education, where the private-school tuition of poor but deserving students are subsidized by the State: at P10,000 for Metro Manila grantees, and P5,000 elsewhere. The education voucher system has total grantees of 720,031; and new slots for 50,000. This has freed up the State system from building over 1,000 classrooms.

Meanwhile, Dep Ed stressed that it’s not alone in handling the usual litany of problems for the back-to-school season, with Valisno noting, “education is everybody’s business.”

Thus, all necessary measures and possible scenarios that may arise at class opening were covered by contingencies agreed upon among DepEd and its partners: the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services and Administration (Pagasa), Manila Electric Company, Manila Water, Maynilad, Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System and the Philippine Information Agency.

It has also gotten the police’s assurance of security for students, teachers and school employees; and the Department of Trade and Industry for checking against profiteering in school supplies.

Indeed, Oplan Balik Eskwela seems to have all bases covered. But it wouldn’t be such a surprise if a litany of new, unexpected woes arise when classes open. It’s the same, old story of sorrow, and one of the biggest challenges to a new President who came to power on the crest of a people’s hopes for genuine change. –Claudeth Mocon / Correspondent, Businessmirror