PPP in education

Here is a portion of a report on a survey of education done in 2001 by the RAND Corporation:

“RAND’s analysis identified key system strengths and weaknesses, most of which were already well-known. A key problem was the rigidity of the Department of Education, whose insular, bureaucratic structure discouraged innovation and limited communication both within the Department and with stakeholders. School-level administrators had little authority. The Department assigned teachers to schools without consulting principals. Teachers were often assigned to teach subjects for which they had little or no training.

“Department inspectors regularly visited classrooms, but their job was to ensure compliance with the mandated curriculum; they provided no support to teachers. The Department provided texts linked to a single, nationally mandated curriculum that was revised at the rate of one grade level per year. Both curriculum and instruction emphasized rote memorization and adhered to a rigid schedule that permitted no alterations to accommodate student progress or need for additional instructional time around certain topics.

“At the system level, no accountability mechanism for school or student performance existed. Substantial education resources were concentrated in the Department to a large central Department staff, leaving limited funds for infrastructure. Many school buildings were old, and many classrooms were overcrowded and lacked modern equipment and supplies. Teachers’ salaries were low compared with those of other nations.”

I changed the word “Ministry” to “Department,” in order to mislead you into thinking that RAND was talking about the Philippines. In fact, RAND did the study of schools in Qatar. The excerpt comes from an article entitled “K-12 Education Reform in Qatar,” written by Gail L. Zellman, Louay Constant, and Charles A. Goldman, published in a 2011 issue of the German journal named “Orient.”

What struck me about the article (which I read while in Berlin last week) was the Emir’s acceptance of a long-term solution recommended by RAND, namely, “providing vouchers for families to enroll their children in private schools.”

The problems of Qatar and the problems of the Philippines are almost identical, except that they have less than 100,000 students and only 220 schools, and we have more than 20 million students and 45,000 schools. Qatar has a single ruler who can make all the crucial decisions on education; in contrast, in the Philippines, everybody considers himself or herself the authority on education.

Fortunately, unlike Qatar, we already have a voucher system. The Education Service Contracting (ESC) program allows public school students to attend classes in private schools. Because of its limited budget, however, our Department of Education (DepEd) can send only very few students to private schools.

Former Education Secretary Mona Valisno has been advocating a radical solution to the problems that will be posed by the introduction of Senior High School (SHS, consisting of Grades 11 and 12) in 2016. Since DepEd will have to spend billions to buy property, to build classrooms, and to hire and train teachers for those two extra grades, Valisno wisely suggests that it would be much cheaper for the government to just give vouchers to all public school students that want to proceed to SHS, allowing them to study in private schools.

I am not implying anything about the quality of education in private schools as compared to that in public schools. Since public schools have not yet offered SHS and only a few private high schools offer the equivalents of Grades 11 and 12, such talk about quality is completely without any empirical value.

We are talking only about money. DepEd would save a lot of money by sending students to private SHSs, instead of putting up its own schools. In fact, DepEd has already partly made that decision, because it has been encouraging private Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to set up SHS on their campuses.

My proposal, then (and it is not just mine, but that of numerous educators), is to have Grades 11 and 12 taught by private high schools or private HEIs, not just during the transition period, but permanently.

Because we need a 12-year basic education cycle, these private HEIs with SHS have to report to DepEd, not to the Commission on Higher Education (CHED). Having a school report to two government agencies is not a new thing anyway; many HEIs today report to both CHED and TESDA (if they have TESDA-accredited ladderized programs). There is nothing wrong with a school reporting to three government agencies. After all, before trifocalization took place in our education system, schools were in effect reporting to all three agencies within one Department of Education.

In fact, DepEd has started the process of subcontracting (we can even call it “internal business processing outsourcing”) with DepEd Order No. 36, series of 2012, entitled “Guidelines on the 2012 Implementation of the Senior High School (SHS) Modelling in Selected Technical and Vocational Education and General Secondary Schools under the K to 12 Basic Education Program.”

DepEd Order No. 36 deals only with existing private high schools, not with private HEIs, because it is CHED that deals with HEIs.

Since many of the current subjects offered in the first two years of college will be taught in SHS, it is a simple matter for college teachers to teach these subjects, thus saving hiring and training costs. (To be continued) –Isagani Cruz (The Philippine Star)