In the Philippines having a good quality education has
always been considered as an opportunity to a better quality of life. It’s an
equalizing instrument between the rich and the poor. Like any other developing
nation-state, the Philippines have various issues and challenges on the
existing educational system. Alejo (2006) identified the following as the major
current issues facing the educational system:
1)
Lack of
physical resources,
2)
Low salaries
of teachers,
3) Lack of competent teachers,
4)
Intensifying
dichotomy between private and public schools,
5)
Increasing
cost of education, and
6)
Mismatch
between training actual job opportunities.
Lack of
physical resources. This
problem was caused by rapid population increase and the non-improvement of the
Philippine economy. This means that school enrollment is constantly increasing
every year, while the government spending on education cannot cope-up with said
increase. The government spending per capita on education is minimal compared
to debt service payments to lending countries and IMF- World Bank.
One of
the resulting situation of this problem is the insufficient classroom for
increasing supply of students and high ratio of students per teacher. In remote
areas, sometimes teachers are holding classes for two different grade level at
the same time and in the same room. This is called split teaching. The
normal size of this kind of class between 70- 80 students.
Low
salaries of teachers. On the
average, a new teacher receives Php9, 939 a month. Compare this with the
entry-level salary of at least P159, 000 in the public schools in California.
No wonder, many teachers are continuously tempted to leave the Philippines in
search for a greener pasture (Alejo, 2006).
Lack of
competent teachers. This is
due to the continuing condition of brain drain in the country. Most of highly
competent teachers are migrating to the United States and some are even
employed as domestic helpers in the Middle East countries.
Intensifying
dichotomy between private and public schools. In the country private schools are perceived to
have high quality of instruction and students from public schools are seen as
mediocre students. From this perception private schools are somewhat licensed
to charge high tuition fees and other fees to maintain their superior school
infrastructures.
Increasing
cost of education. Primary
and secondary education is free as mandated by law. But the increasing cost of
education means that a family cannot support the other expenses in sending
their children to school. These expenses include school uniform, books,
transportation expenses and other related expenses. In a family with four
children this would be a large amount of money and this is the regular family
size in the country.
Mismatch
between training actual job opportunities. This is one problem at the tertiary level and it
is also the cause of the existence of a large group of educated unemployed or
underemployed.
The Philippine problems on education were the effect
of ineffective macro and micro policies of the government inter-playing with
other factors in the society. The main reasons for this problems would be that
the country is simply not investing enough in the education system, and the
education system has been inefficiently managed.
To solve this
problem in my point of view, in the macro level, we need to increase the budget
expenditure on education. But how? The Philippines can have a moratorium on its
foreign debt payment and prioritize the budget on education.
According to Isagani Cruz, a former Department of
Education official, on the micro level, the department is implementing numerous
effort to curb the effect of these problems. Such interventions is the introduction of new curriculum,
education service contracting, multi-shift classroom policy, library hubs,
early childhood education, madrasah education, inclusive education, alternative
learning system, school feeding, Every Child a Reader Program (ECARP),
competency-based teacher assessment standards, computerization, Schools First,
Brigada Eskwela, Sagip Eskwela, Adopt-a-School, Oplan Balik Eskwela, and the
Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda (BESRA). A former department secretary commented on an
interview that, “if we are to improve Philippine education, we must attract and
recruit the best and the brightest among our young citizens to become
teachers”, and teachers should also be well compensated to prevent them from
migrating to other countries.
References:
Alleba Politics, URL: http://politics.alleba.com/category/education/
Big Brother (Kuya)/Big Sister (Ate) Culture:
A Proactive and Responsible Way of Alleviating the Philippine Educational
System, URL: http://www.essaycompetition.org/docs/2006/EC06_Alejo.pdf
KAAKBAY CDI, Philippine Public
Education – A Situationer by Monday,
Jun. 05, 2006 at 6:56 AM, URL:
http://qc.indymedia.org/news/2006/06/7391.php
Philippine Daily Inquirer, URL: http://www.inq7.net/brk/2004/jul/05/brkpol_4-1.htm
Cruz,
Isagani. URL: http://criticplaywright.blogspot.com/2006/01/creative-solutions-to-philippine.html
Key
Issues in Philippine Education, URL: http://www.ph.net/htdocs/education/issue.htm
Submitted by:
Lecture on Japan’s Development Experience
Department of International Development-
GSID
Submitted to:
Prof. Yasushi Hirosato
Graduate School of
International Development
Nagoya University
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