Phl education flunking

Filipino student activists have found a more engaging way to call attention to themselves than the issues they are supposed to be fighting for. They call it “planking,” or throwing themselves on busy roads where they just lie there and stop the free flow of traffic. And perhaps die there accidentally if, unfortunately, speed maniacs drive over them.

Militant students lead the “planking” gimmick to dramatize protest over the severe budget cuts that both Malacañang Palace and Congress made on the allocations for state universities and colleges (SUCs) in the 2012 General Appropriations Act (GAA) bill.

Thousands of students and teachers from various SUCs walked out from their classes last Friday to protest the supposed subsidy cuts for education and social services.

The walkout was staged by students of the University of the Philippines (UP), Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), Philippine Normal University (PNU), Eulogio Amang Rodriguez Institute of Science and Technology (EARIST), Rizal Technological University, Marikina Polytechnic College, and Technological University of the Philippines (TUP).

The student protests followed after the House of Representatives approved last week the Palace version of the 2012 GAA bill. They deplored the budget given to the SUCs, which was pegged at P21.8 billion for 2012. This is lower than the P22.03 billion allocated for 112 SUCs this year.

Department of Budget and Management (DBM) claims the aggregate budget for SUCs actually increased to P26.1 billion. Contrary to the protesters’ claim, DBM Secretary Florencio Abad Jr. cited SUCs funding had been increased from this year’s P23.7 billion.

The DBM chief explained that the proposed SUC budget for next year is broken down as follows: P23.6 billion for the automatic appropriation for SUCs; P2 billion to fill vacancies lumped under the Miscellaneous and Personnel Benefit Funds (MPBF); and P500 million under the Committee on Higher Education for SUC Development.

If these DBM figures were true and correct, then there should be no reason for these student protest rallies — that now include the planking gimmick — to continue. But obviously, it’s not the case as even the faculty and school administrators of SUCs have joined these protest actions. 

Sen. Edgardo Angara, chairman of the Senate Finance sub-committee on education now combing through the proposed 2012 budget bill, vowed to look into the complaints of the SUCs. Angara, who once served as UP president from 1981-1987, noted the laments of SUCs were valid and must be squarely addressed by them in Congress if the Palace won’t heed the students. Priority to education, he pointed out, is the key to improve the country’s competitiveness in the quality of graduates being produced for our labor force.  

With so many numbers being churned out by both sides, no one could tell how much exactly of the government’s annual budget really go to subsidy of these state-run tertiary educational institutions. But an independent monitoring of the quality of tertiary education in the Philippines could be a good indicator how this depleting government subsidy has adversely affected SUCs.

This year’s results of the World University Rankings done annually by the Quacquarelli Symonds international advisory group recently stirred controversy in the Philippines. None of our universities and colleges, including UP, made it to the annual global list of top 300 schools of the QS World University Rankings. “This may come as a disappointment but possibly not a surprise as thousands of students recently took to the streets in protest of the government’s budget cuts in higher education,” the QS pointed out.

Department of Education (DepEd) Secretary Armin Luistro himself brushed off the QS rankings. When he was still president of the De La Salle University (DLSU), Luistro said they did not pay attention nor give importance to the QS ranking. But it’s not really the concern for Luistro because he, as DepEd Secretary, has a far more serious problem on improving the quality of basic education in our country.

With so much competing demands for scarce resources of government, the annual budget for basic education is not enough to fill the gap for shortage in classrooms, teachers, textbooks, desks, and even supply of chalk. 

This sad state of our basic education is felt everywhere not only in the countryside but right here in many public schools in Metro Manila. This I learned from my mother’s “kasambahay” whose three children go to the CAA National High School in Las Piñas City. It is located just outside the village where my mother lives at the CAA Road where many of the depressed communities in the city are found.

Would you believe that students there go to school every other day? Boys report to school Mondays and Wednesdays while girls report only on Tuesdays and Thursdays. It’s only on Fridays that both boys and girls hold their classes together. And they attend half-day classes only.

This is the scheme adopted by the school and authorized by DepEd in order to accommodate 3,354 students enrolled in the school that has only 18 classrooms and 70 teachers. If not done this way, each class would have as much as 110 students and certainly not the ideal class size conducive to learning.

Under this scheme, as I gathered, students are given take-home activities on the days they are not in school. This is the “in school, out school approach” being implemented to address the congestion problem of classroom and teacher shortage.

I was told this “experiment” is also being implemented in Quezon City and other Metro Manila public schools with huge student population problems. Sadly, students and teachers can only grin and bear this sad state of our public school system.

Unlike their brothers and sisters in SUCs who could go planking on the streets to dramatize their plight, these students suffer the consequences of flunking quality of education they get from the sorry state of our public school system.