Ways and means

The Department of Education (DepEd) has confidently guaranteed quality education to more than 20 million public school students for the school year 2010-2011. Beneath the upbeat surface however, the team is extremely hard pressed to meet expenses, given its limited budget.      

For this fiscal year, the government has allocated P253.95 billion for education, which is roughly 17% of the total 2010 national budget. Ordinarily, the figure may seem like an enormous amount of money, which would go a long way in addressing the needs of our beleaguered public preschools, elementary and high schools. Unfortunately, the DepEd has to divide the funding it gets among State Universities and Colleges (SUCs), the Commission on Higher Education (CHED), and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA).

To give you an idea about what DepEd Secretary Mona Valisno has to hurdle: the public school system needs more than 50,000 additional classrooms in order to achieve the ideal international ratio of 35 students per classroom. The status quo is reportedly 1:45 student ratio. DepEd officials are undaunted as they focus on their plans to construct 6,000 new classrooms this year on top of the 429,390 already in existence. Unfortunately, they still have to resolve the shortage of textbooks and the dwindling availability of teachers. At present, there are 15,841 public pre-schools and more than 45,000 public elementary and high schools in the country.

In the face of these obstacles, the DepEd Secretary reassures the public that these concerns are already being remedied through Oplan Balik Eskwela (OBE), Brigada Eskwela Plus, and the department’s continuous coordination with various national agencies, local government units, NGOs and generous private organizations.

Just to illustrate how the DepEd has commendably found ways and means to step up public school education standards despite the setbacks, so far, they have put up computer laboratories in 5,409 out of a total of 6,650 public high schools. Moreover, high schools with internet capability total 3,820 while internet connections for the remaining 2,830 public high schools are already being procured.

Although the DepEd has managed to keep its head above water, circumstances are far from ideal. The department has to cope with an estimated one million new entrants to the public school system each year, virtually negating any incremental increase in the budget allocated by the national government. Since the department is committed to achieve Education for All (EFA) by 2015 under the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) set by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); the only way this dream can be realized is by doubling the current budget.

It is DepEd’s mandate to provide quality education to all children of school age. That means it should have the capability to accept every child or teenager who wants to go to school; and be able to provide them with excellent education (some of the best schools in the world happen to be public schools). From my stand, given the full support of national government and with the help of the private community, the department can achieve the first-rate level of education that every Filipino student deserves. –Domini M. Torrevillas (The Philippine Star)