Education in the SONA

During his campaign for the presidency, Candidate Noynoy offered a 10-point agenda for education. In his State of the Nation address last Monday, President Benigno Aquino III focused on three of these points, namely, the 12-year basic education cycle, additional classrooms, and GASTPE.

Because the SONA was meant merely to outline what he wanted to achieve in the first year of his presidency and not to defend his proposals, Aquino had no time to repeat what he had already explained anyway several times during his campaign.

Let us review the details of the three points on education.

First, the addition of two years to our basic education cycle. Aquino said, “Mapapalawak natin ang basic education cycle mula sa napakaikling sampung taon tungo sa global standard na labindalawang taon.” The official English translation inadequately puts it this way, “We will be able to expand our basic education cycle from ten years to the global standard of twelve years.” I say the translation is inadequate because it fails to translate the word “napakaikli,” which is the point of the sentence in Filipino.

We have the shortest basic education cycle in the whole world. In all other countries in the world, a student needs to have gone through 12 or more years of formal schooling before being admitted to a university.

Because universities around the world (except for ours) expect students to have gone through at least 12 years of formal education and, therefore, to be adults (18 years old or older), they can offer higher level courses immediately. The European first year college, for example, is the equivalent of our third year college in the Philippines (a year consisting of major subjects). Partly because we have only two years of major subjects and the Europeans have three, our college degrees are understandably looked down upon by European universities as substandard. (Our four world-ranked universities make up for the lack of years through excellent research outputs.)

Since 10 percent of our population work abroad and need credentials recognized internationally, we have no choice but to raise the standards of both our basic and higher education. By moving some of the subjects taught in the first two years of college to high school, we free at least one year of college for more major courses. Therefore, we not only make our basic education quantitatively equal to that of other countries, but we also make our higher education qualitatively comparable to that of foreign universities.

Second, Aquino mentioned classrooms twice during the SONA. The money squandered by the National Food Authority could have built “all the classrooms that our country needs, which cost P130 billion,” and public-private partnerships will allow the government to build more classrooms.

Money that should not be lost and money that can be earned will certainly solve the problem of classrooms. Aquino had no time, however, to mention one of the major financial problems in the construction of classrooms – the corruption in DPWH. Senator Franklin Drilon, for one, has built a huge number of classrooms at a fraction of the cost quoted by DPWH. We could build more than three times the number of classrooms envisioned in the current budget of DepEd, if DPWH would just stop overpricing.

Speaking of money, Aquino also mentioned the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program funded by the World Bank, part of which is meant to help very poor students to go to school. (The speech writers missed using the Filipino name of the program, Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program, which would have been more in keeping with the rest of the speech.)

Third, Aquino mentioned Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE), a program that funds part of the tuition of poor students in private schools in places where there are no public high schools. GASTPE fits in well with Aquino’s overall vision of public-private partnerships (a logical extension of the People Power that installed both Cory and Noynoy). GASTPE helps both students and private schools; conversely, private schools help the government fulfil its duty to educate everyone. In his 10-point Education Agenda, Aquino promised to replace GASTPE’s education voucher system (EVS) with education service contracting (ESC); in the SONA, Aquino thus mentioned ESC.

Aquino promised ten educational reforms, and within his first year in office, he can do at least three of them. He can already add one year to basic education (very simply by reengineering the current Prep to become Grade One, thus making a seven-year elementary school; funds for this are already in the budget). He can reallocate CCT and GASTPE to help really poor students. Finally, he can moderate, if not eliminate, the greed of DPWH.

CONFERENCE TODAY: The College of Education of the University of the Philippines Diliman hosts the three-day 6th International Conference on Teacher Education (ICTED) starting today at SEAMEO Innotech, with the theme “Celebrating diversity and transformative innovations in teacher education.” The keynote speaker is Josette Biyo (Philippine Science High School, Iloilo). Plenary speakers include Patricio Abinales (Kyoto University), Cynthia Bautista (UP), Allan Bernardo (De La Salle University), Maria Serena Diokno (UP), Richard Gordon (California State University), Gloria Johanessen (Texas State University), Jose Lalas (University of Redlands), Dina Ocampo (UP), and Reyes Quezada (University of San Diego). –Isagani Cruz (The Philippine Star)