School drop-out rates highlight lost decade of education in Philippines
from the Internet
MANILA // In a dimly lit, windowless room in one of Manila's sprawling slums, Susan Cumal, 46, spends her day hunched over a sewing machine, working to earn enough money to send her children to school. In a good week, the mother of three can earn around 1,500 pesos (Dh118). Like many Filipinos, Mrs Cumal moved from the northern province of Pampanga in 1984 to Manila in the hope of finding a better life. Instead she found herself in 758E Rodriguez in Pasay City, Manila, a slum housing more than 3,000 families.
Mrs Cumal considers herself fortunate. She has managed to build up a reasonable sewing business and has to put one son, who is now a teacher, through college. She has two more children at school and hopes they too will go to college. "Education is the only way out of this," she says looking around her modest home. "Many of the kids here don't go to school. Their families are either too poor or just want their children to work and earn money to live.
"I want my kids to have a better life … this is not life this is just survival," she said. Last week 23 million Filipino children went back to school but by the end of the year over two million will have dropped out. The outgoing president Gloria Arroyo's task force on education reported in May that 700,000 children will not complete elementary school and 1.36 million will not finish secondary school. According to the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), the Philippine education system has a shortage of 54,060 teachers; 4,538 principals; 6,473 head teachers; 61,343 classrooms; 816,291 seats and 113,051 water and sanitation facilities.
"After nine years in office, the Arroyo government has utterly failed to eliminate shortages of teachers, classrooms, textbooks, sanitation facilities, and other critical resources in our public schools," the ACT national chairperson Antonio Tinio said during a media briefing last week. "It's true that the Arroyo government has been hiring 10,000 teachers and constructing 3,000 or so classrooms annually. However, these efforts are not enough compared to the sheer size of our enrolment," Mr Tinio said.
"As a result, public school education in the Arroyo years is characterised by oversized classes with 60 or more students, contributing to a further decline in the quality of education," he added. The Philippines spends around 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on education compared with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco's) recommended 4-5 per cent.
Most major Southeast Asian countries spend 5-6 per cent of GDP on education. The Philippines also spends less on education than most of its Southeast Asian neighbours at US$318 (Dh1,168) per child compared with Thailand, for example, which spends $1,048. According to the ACT, the Philippines has the largest student-teacher ratio at elementary level in Southeast Asia, next to Cambodia, at roughly 60 to 80 children per class.
Unesco says in its National Education Support Strategy (Uness) that the quality of elementary education in the Philippines has deteriorated over the years as indicated by the low achievement rates for students. In the 2007-2008 school year (2008-2009 figures have not been released) the pass rate was 64.81per cent in mathematics, 63.89 per cent in science, 57.90 per cent in English, 61.62 per cent in social sciences and 73.18 per cent in Filipino. All scores were low compared to the desired 75 per cent cut-off score, Unesco said.
For the same year the Philippines ranked 41st in science and 42nd in mathematics from among 45 countries in the Trends in International Math and Science Survey, according to Unesco. As for secondary education, the Uness says that the quality "is not far from that of the elementary level as indicated by the poor performance of fourth-year students in the National Achievement Test. The Uness blames the deteriorating quality of basic education in the Philippines to under investment in education that has resulted in shortages of main educational resources such as teachers, textbooks and classrooms.
Education advocates target zero dropout rate in public schools
from the Internet
MANILA, Philippines -- Mayors and top-level local government officials, school administrators, and other education advocates who attended Synergeia Foundation's 8th National Education Summit have committed to hammer down to zero the dropout rates in public schools in their localities.
Synergeia trustee Washington Sycip encouraged the participants to focus on the reduction of dropout rates and not just improving public school children's performance. He said good education would lift families across the country from poverty, as well as ensure that democracy would work.
"When people are hungry, they sell their votes. Only when poverty is reduced will democracy really work in this country," Sycip said.
Almost 350 top-level representatives (mayors, vice-mayors and other top-level LGU officials) from almost 50 municipalities all the way from Cagayan Province to the Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao attended the summit.
Saranggani Gov. Rene Miguel Dominguez, headed the province's contingent.
There were also 114 educators from the Department of Education (DepEd)composed of teachers, principals, supervisors, and superintendents, as well as education advocates from the corporate sector like Metrobank Foundation and Team Energy.
Synergeia president and CEO Milwida Guevara said efforts to reduce drop out rates would complement measures to improve students' achievement tests through trainings for teachers, administrators, and parents as well as getting community support.
During the workshop sessions, participants agreed that supporting the DepEd's Alternative Learning System (ALS) that target out-of-school youth is the country's hope for bringing children back to school. In ARMM where the USAID-funded Education Quality and Access to Learning and Livelihood Skills Project invested heavily on hiring instructors specifically for out-of-school youth, the ALS program has started to bring children back to school.
Guevara said the country's national dropout rate among elementary school children stands at 30 percent and the figure shoots up to 70 percent in depressed areas like the ARMM. This is because of extreme poverty, child labor, and families' lack of appreciation for education.
The 8th National Education Summit was organized with the assistance of the DepEd, the Department of Interior and Local Government, USAID, World Bank, Ford Foundation and Ateneo de Manila University. It was held last Feb. 18-19 at the Ateneo Professional Schools in Makati City.
