Dropouts

A worker was sent by his employer to a special school in Makati for a three-day certificate course to enhance his skills.

On the first day the worker, more than 20 years old and with no college education, sat from early morning till early evening in a class consisting mainly of male workers preparing for jobs overseas.

The worker wondered why his employer was paying more than P5,000 for his lessons in the morning that did not seem to be directly related to his line of work.

In the evening, he related this to his employer, adding that he was having problems keeping up with the lessons because a lot of English was used in the lecture.

The next morning, the employer called up the school and asked the lecturer to use Filipino as the main medium of instruction.

The lecturer complied. Only then did everyone find out that the worker had walked into the wrong class, and the course he had enrolled in had been postponed by a few weeks.

When the course finally pushed through, the worker finished it and got his certificate – a piece of paper that could land him a job overseas, if he could understand English enough to prepare his travel and work documents as well as improve his skills.

The worker obtained basic education in one of the provinces in southern Luzon. One day he decided to try his luck in Metro Manila, where he quickly learned his special skill. The quality of his learning curve indicates that given proper education and better opportunities, he could have been a good student and gone on to college and a better paying job.

Instead, he and a number of his province mates, whose first language is the dialect of their hometown, speak of the difficulty of learning lessons in either English or Filipino, the two mediums of instruction in all Philippine public schools.

That same language difficulty, compounded by poverty that makes even transportation fare to and from school a heavy burden for many families, made one of his province mates drop out in second grade and never bother to obtain formal education. Like the skilled worker, that school dropout does not seem to be lacking in innate mental capability; over the years she taught herself to read and write and develop skills that could help her earn a living.

Their stories are not uncommon in our public education system.

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An estimated 19.46 million students are expected in 37,967 public elementary schools, 5,257 high schools and 15,841 pre-schools when classes open today. Pre-school enrollment has risen following the conversion of many barangay centers into pre-schools starting in 2008.

Filipinos know the value of education, particularly at an early age. I know a number of parents from low-income households who want to send all their children to kindergarten in preparation for free schooling which starts at first grade. But they cannot afford even the minimal P100 tuition and some miscellaneous fees per semester.

Those families appreciate access to government-run pre-schools and kindergarten at subsidized rates. Let’s hope the children are getting the right preparation for grade school.

Studies have shown that for every 100 children who enter first grade, 86 go on to Grade 2, 75 move on to fourth grade. 67 to Grade 6, and 65 finish the elementary cycle.

Of the 65, 58 will move on to high school, with only 42 graduating after four years.

The latest Philippine Human Development Report prepared by the United Nations Development Program states that achievement tests over the years have shown that fewer than one percent of incoming high school freshmen have acquired the minimum competencies of elementary education.

Increasing the education budget could help. Never mind rich Asian countries such as Japan and Singapore, which spend an average of $5,000 and $1,800, respectively, per student each school year. But the Philippine budget of about $138 pales when compared even to the $853 allocated by Thailand per student.

This year’s budget for the Department of Education is about P160 billion. Education is supposed to get the lion’s share of the annual appropriation, as mandated by the Constitution. But in truth it is less than a third of the amount automatically appropriated for debt servicing, which is P600 billion, and lower than the P260 billion for the Internal Revenue Allotments of local government units. Shouldn’t someone be held liable for this culpable violation of the Constitution?

Even if there is a bigger budget, we need to take a second look at our early education program, which is critical to learning, particularly the main medium of instruction from pre-school to at least second grade.

If you miss even a few days in a particular subject, it can be a struggle to catch up.

A child who fails to understand the building blocks of learning, mainly because of a language barrier, is likely to end up as a grade school dropout.

Our policy makers must study proposals to use the prevalent first language in a particular community as the main medium of instruction from pre-school to at least sixth grade, with mandatory subjects in English and Filipino starting perhaps in Grade One. New and complex concepts are easier to grasp in one’s first language.

Once sufficient competency is acquired in the two new languages, then certain subjects can be taught in either English (math and science) or Filipino (history), with the local dialect still being used as a backup to facilitate learning.

We must remember that even in some provinces in Luzon, Tagalog-based Filipino is not the first language in a number of households.

The importance of English for national competitiveness cannot be overemphasized. But learning this foreign language requires proper preparation for those who do not come from English-speaking households.

That skilled worker and his female colleague came from a province where three dialects are spoken. They still cannot understand some Tagalog words. English might as well be Latin for them.

They are products of our public schools.–Ana Marie Pamintuan, Philippine Star