As in-person classes resume, Tatler weighs in on the current state of education in the Philippines and how shall we face it
In an ideal world, we imagine schools as an environment with classrooms complete with the materials and equipment needed for an optimised learning experience. We visualise teachers and students arriving in their crisp uniforms, carrying a bag full of textbooks and tools to be used for an exciting day of learning ahead. Sadly, this is not the reality of the education situation in the Philippines.
Many schools across the country, an archipelago and a developing nation, face chronic problems of access and infrastructure. “In urban cities, the problem is [the lack of] buildable space. In remote areas, many students must cross rivers or hike mountains to go to school,” explains Representative Roman Romulo, chairman of the Philippine House of Representatives Higher and Technical Education Committee. And it’s true. Over the last ten years, I have been involved in school outreach programmes both in rural and urban areas and in many instances, I have witnessed the deplorable state of education in the country.
In 2014, our group went to a public school in Biliran, a province two hours away from Tacloban, also severely hit by super-typhoon Yolanda, to extend little help. What welcomed us after trekking down a steep terrain for hours were pupils holding their class under a mango tree, for their classrooms were blown away by the storm a year ago and have not been rebuilt since. In the city centre, schools were, at that time, used as evacuation centres, so students had to sacrifice and stay in tents or huts. On another occasion, our group crossed three rivers and two hanging bridges to reach a small campus in Mauban, Quezon. But you see, this is just the tip of the iceberg. In 2019, veteran broadcaster Jessica Soho narrated in a documentary how students in Davao del Norte had to ride a salay (makeshift cable car made of rattan) over a river every day.
And because these schools are hard to reach, delivery of learning supplies and equipment are delayed, too, leaving education resources scarce in many provinces. There were reported accounts of teachers buying chalk and photocopying modules out of their pockets, as well as inadequate textbooks, computers and staffing—narratives that are very common in our education sector.
Then there’s the issue of the quality of education. According to Senator Win Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Committee on Basic Education, international and local large-scale assessment programmes reveal that many Filipino learners, especially the young ones, cannot read and count. “We are in an education crisis,” the senator describes the current state of education in the Philippines, expressing the country’s dire need for timely intervention and reforms.
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"“The foundational skills are the most important"
To address concerns about deteriorating literacy and numeracy among Filipino students, Romulo and Gatchalian propose to decongest the curriculum further to focus on the most essential: reading, math and good conduct. “The foundational skills are the most important,” Romulo says.
Furthermore, the K-12 curriculum must be carefully revisited as it seemingly failed to fulfil its promise of increased employability. “Recent data show that employers are not keen on hiring senior high school graduates and would still prefer college graduates. There’s also a mismatch between existing industries and the current senior high school strands,” adds Romulo. “We also need to re-evaluate the use of the mother tongue as a medium of instruction,” says Gatchalian on the need to analyse its theoretical benefits such as comprehension and learner confidence vis-a-vis the roadblocks encountered in implementing the country’s diverse language portfolio.
Making matters worse, the global health crisis exacerbated these lingering issues regarding access, infrastructure and quality in the education sector. Classroom shortage in public schools, for instance, reportedly ballooned to 91,000 due to the recent calamities that wreaked havoc in certain areas, as well as the exodus of students from private to public schools and the need for more space to practice social distancing.
In the case of private schools, however, the opposite is true. There is a surplus of unused spaces as about 860 private schools nationwide shut down this school year due to low enrolment turnout and financial constraints, according to the Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations of the Philippines (COCOPEA). It is reported that around 900,000 students in private schools transferred to public schools this school year for free education. COCOPEA adds that these empty classrooms could have helped alleviate the shortage in the public schools had there been an efficient, well-funded student subsidy programme, which could have also avoided the closures of these private schools in the first place. Although the Department of Education (DepEd) has an ongoing Senior High School Voucher Program, which aims to help junior high school graduates to afford tuition fees in private senior high school institutions, the subsidy ranges only from PHP14,000 up to PHP 22,500 per student is relatively low compared to the actual cost of education in private schools. There is also no similar programme for grade school students.