Education deserves priority in national budget

Today Malacañang submits to Congress the proposed P1.645-trillion national budget for 2011. According to Budget Secretary Florencio Abad, the proposed budget is P104 billion higher than this year’s P1.541 trillion.

The biggest chunk of the proposed budget is for education, with P207.3 billion. By comparison, there will be P110.6 billion for public works, P104.7 billion for defense, P88.2 billion for interior and local government, P37.7 billion for agriculture, P34.3 billion for social welfare, P33.3 billion for health, P32.2 billion for transportation and communications, P16.7 billion for agrarian reform, and P14.3 billion for the judiciary.

That the Aquino administration is serious in giving due emphasis to the education of the youth was emphasized by Secretary Herminio Coloma when he appeared as guest at last Saturday’s Kapihan sa Sulô news forum.

But even as the new dispensation wants to give the Filipino youth a better deal than previous regimes, there are enough suggestions on how to make education better serve national development goals.

Eastern Samar Rep. Ben P. Evardone, for instance, is asking the Department of Education (DepEd) to cut down some of its programs and focus only on the basics to improve the quality of education.

Evardone, a member of the Committee on Basic Education and Culture in Congress, points out that, at present, the DepEd has 54 different programs under the categories of access to basic education, quality and relevance to basic education, teacher competence, school-based management, alternative-learning system, health and nutrition, and other programs and projects.

This “shotgun approach” of the DepEd, says Evardone, should be junked because “it has failed miserably in ensuring quality education to our children.”

Evardone said some of these programs of the DepEd are either unfunded or overlapping. “The unfunded programs cause undue burden to the teachers and parents who have to concentrate on resource mobilizations,” he also said.

The lack of focus by the DepEd on the core subjects of basic education, the legislator says, is the main reason we are uncompetitive. He wants the DepEd to concentrate on the basic ills of our educational system: lack of classrooms, teachers and educational materials. It’s an eminently sound proposal that Education Secretary Armin Luistro should seriously consider.

–Ernesto Hilario / About Town, Businessmirror

E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com