The Arroyo legacy (2): Education

President Arroyo’s legacy in education can be described as unambiguous in terms of resource commitments, but less clear in terms of performance metrics. This is so for two reasons: (i) closing the educational supply/demand gap is constantly being constrained by fiscal and population-growth issues; (ii) it takes a while for improvement to show up in the numbers for student performance.

The total of new classrooms built from 2001 to 2010 (target) is nearly 115,800, a lot more than any previous president or even the President’s own targets. And yet classroom-to-pupil ratios essentially stayed flat in elementary from 1:38 in 2002 to 1:39 in 2009, improving only somewhat in secondary from 1:60 to 1:54, as ever more new kids continued to line up at school doors each year.

My friend Peter Wallace recommends 1:25, a classroom-to-pupil ratio that would have required another 200,000 classrooms costing around P150 billion. It’s a great idea, but where would the additional funds have come from, especially when the government had to spend on other things that were arguably just as important, e.g. economic stimulus and anti-poverty assistance during the global recession the last two years?

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During President Arroyo’s watch, annual investment in educational resources rose nearly four times, from less than P7 billion in 2000 to over P24 billion this year. This covers everything from new classrooms to more teachers and higher salaries to Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education vouchers (today, one in every two private high school students is aided by these scholarship vouchers).

The payoffs were real, though unheralded. In 2009, only 227 barangays had no access to elementary school (down from 1,617 in 2002), while one had no high school access (versus 43 in 2002). Only 121 schools required three to four shifts (versus 338 earlier). But these are obviously first-order improvements, the kind you see when you’re just beginning to make a dent in the problem.

The basic metrics for educational service delivery—students’ participation, cohort survival, and dropout rates—improved somewhat for high school, but hardly at all for elementary. On the other hand, average results of national achievement tests have clearly gone up: in high school, from 36 percent (school year 2003-2004) to 47 percent (2007-2008); in elementary, from 43 percent (2002-2003) to 65 percent (2007-2008).

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Education is evidently a problem that doesn’t respond so quickly when you just throw more money at it. It requires a lot of deliberation, looking at strategy as well as resources, tracking outcomes as well as making plans. And you have to have the patience to dig in for the long haul.

This is why the President, some years back created a task force on education, headed by the redoubtable Ateneo president Fr. Ben Nebres, to do the spade work for a total system overhaul. Their recommendations are fascinating, ranging from ladderized education to closer industry-academe linkages to empowering community school boards. You can learn more about this from a number of books coming out this month on the President’s legacy.

Education is also a reason why President Arroyo decided to run for Congress, where educational reform will in fact top her legislative agenda. Of course, whether or not she’ll be given a fighting chance to push through that agenda at her usual breakneck speed is something that still remains to be seen. This will be a decision that will be made for her by others.

gbolivar1952@gmail.com