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EDUCATION
Secretary Jesli Lapus wasn’t lying when he earlier
declared that the opening of classes was generally smooth
and peaceful. But he wasn’t giving us the entire panorama
either.
He was
confident about the ratios of one classroom for every 45
students and one textbook for every six students. But at
the same time, some started to wonder whether such ratios
improved because of the government’s additional
expenditures for classrooms and books or because of the
higher number of dropouts.
Indeed,
there have been an incrementing number of school dropouts
because of poverty. Based on the records of the Student
Councils Association of the Philippines, there were 12.4
million out-of-school youth in 2005. The following year
the number surged to 14.6 million.
According
to another study by the Alliance of Concerned Teachers,
the dropout rate in 2001 was 7.7 percent in elementary and
8.5 percent in high school; in 2005, this increases to
10.6 percent in elementary and 15.8 percent in high
school. Will these continue to climb in 2007?
These are
merely average figures. One must not also brush aside the
fact that in poorer regions and provinces, such figures
are even more saddening. The classroom-to-student ratio in
Tacloban, Leyte, for instance, is worse than the national
average.
There is
plenty of evidence of the poor quality of education being
served to the young because of severe insufficiency in
educational facilities and the lack of qualified teachers.
It’s also worth asking how many college graduates who are
looking for work are not properly equipped and trained for
employment.
The sad
reality is that the Philippine educational system is still
in an alarming state. After the smooth and peaceful
opening comes the frenzied struggle for classrooms and
desks and books—which are still lacking.
Fight
poverty
THE
Department of Education (DepEd) may have found a more
reliable partner to aid in solving this perennial problem.
The department has been working on further increasing the
private sector efforts to focus their corporate social
responsibility (CSR) programs on education.
Still
corporate-funded educational programs may haven’t done
much yet as indicated by student performance in various
national and global examinations.
The League
of Corporate Foundations (LCF) recorded P1.2 billion of
social investment in education from July 2005 to June 2006
against the backcloth of the DepEd’s current P129-billion
budget. The league, however, realizes that it is not
enough to make contributions to turn back the Philippines’
declining global competitiveness and human-resource
capabilities. What is needed, it summed up in what it
identified as the “4Rs”—reforming education, the CSR
roadmap, and resources for results.
According
to LCF, the CSR roadmap provides a blueprint for
consolidated private sector’s response to fight poverty
through education, with particular emphasis on school
improvement and student, teacher and learning strategies
development.
“Education
is the great leveler; if you are educated, you stand a
better chance of succeeding than when you’re not educated.
Our foundation’s main view is really to improve education.
That’s the biggest in terms of getting our funds and
resources,” Ayala Foundation’s executive vice president
Guillermo Luz says.
The Ayala
Foundation’s
Center of
Excellence
in Public Elementary Education (Centex) offers bright
children from poor families quality education. Luz reveals
that excellence in education serves as a mechanism for an
upright society where a culture of peace is prevailing.
Two Centex
schools operating in Tondo,
Manila,
and Bauan, Batangas, now educate approximately 1,000
students and have trained over 70 teachers.
The
schools ensure quality education through the regular
mentoring of their teachers, because they believe that the
“quality of a school is directly proportional to the
quality of classroom instruction,” says Luz.
Underscoring the importance of sustaining proper
intellectual and character development of its students,
Luz says the school continues supporting its graduates as
they move on to high school. This resulted in a unique
partnership between Centex and the College of the Holy
Spirit in Manila.
Companies
under the Ayala group are the significant contributors to
the foundation’s operations. “But aside from that, we have
many partners—we work with, say, World Bank, USAID and the
different embassies. They could be Dutch, Singaporean,
British, American embassies,” says Luz.
On the
other hand, the SM Foundation donated schoolhouses in
Baguio, Cavite, Cagayan de Oro, Pampanga, Quezon and
Iloilo out of concern for the lack of classrooms in public
elementary and high schools. And in collaboration with
media giant ABS-CBN, E-Media Program and SM Prime
Holdings, the foundation has been providing multimedia
educational television programs for elementary
schoolchildren.
Petron
Corp., through the Petron Foundation, has also been
turning over school buildings nationwide, again, to help
allay the shortage of classrooms in the country.
It found
out that there are nearly 5,000 barangays in the country
that have no schools within their communities. Most poor
families still cannot send their children to school due to
other expenses, although the government subsidizes tuition
in public elementary schooling. Hence, the Petron
Foundation launched Tulong Aral, a scholarship program for
poor but deserving students in elementary-school level.
Tulong Aral provides these families with sustenance that
gives their children a complete set of school uniforms,
school supplies, school projects and meal allowance.
Cost-effective investment
LAST year,
Ayala Foundation collected about P15 million from
corporations and government officials who wanted to share
in the funding.
“If we go
to a city or a province, the governor or the mayor wants
schools to have Internet [connections]. They chip in money
and we chip in money, too; we share the cost. That happens
in all over the country. As a result, we were able to
connect 1,300 schools to the Internet,” Luz says.
The
Gearing-Up Internet Literacy and Access for Students, or
Gilas, a multisectoral initiative through a consortium of
private corporations and civic organizations, aims to
connect all Philippine public high schools to the
Internet.
Luz points
out that in an environment of resource scarcity, Internet
literacy is possibly the most cost-effective investment in
the educational system.
“Just to
put a thousand schools on the Internet, it’s worth a
hundred million pesos. We do a thousand a year. We have to
raise in cash or kind P100 million worth of funds to
connect public schools to the Internet,” he says.
“We think
that we need to bring our kids closer to computers and the
Internet,” Luz continues, adding that hooking up 5,800
schools to the Internet by 2010 is one of Ayala
Foundation’s goals. “It is something I could never dream
of when I was in high school.”
Through
its Smart Schools Program, Smart Communications Inc. is
also committed to promote information and communications
technology in public high school with school officials and
parents-teachers-community associations as partners.
Implemented through the Philippine Business for Social
Progress, with the support of the Department of Education
and Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Program, Smart
Schools Program drives to supply public-school teachers
with Internet access through the PLDT group’s wide array
of communications solutions, access to online content and
teacher training.
Skilled
workers
TECHNICAL
vocational education and training have substantive roles
in the improvement of skilled workers to train them with
the right resource attitude and work competency. However,
Gokongwei
Brothers Foundation Technical Training Center’s director
Felipe Torres doesn’t think that the present local
educational system—especially on the technical side—is
addressing the basic competencies well enough, “So we’re
forced to train them again,” he says.
He
stresses that the best way of helping the poor is to help
them get a good education. “Why education? Because it’s
the most tested way of helping people from the lower
levels move upward.”
“And why
technical education? Because it is expensive,” Torres
continues, saying that John Gokongwei, the tycoon behind
the technical training center, only wants to give every
underprivileged student a vehicle to compete in the
aggressive global workforce.
Gokongwei
made the
University of
San Carlos—where
he spent his high-school days—the recipient of P50 million
to build its Gokongwei School for Engineering. He had
already expended a part of his wealth in building
facilities for schools like the De La Salle University,
Ateneo de Manila University and Xavier School.
Also,
Megaworld Foundation, the sociocivic arm of Megaworld
Corp., has been there to promote the practice of
architecture, engineering, interior design and information
technology through strategic assistance and incentives to
deserving high-school graduates and college students.
In 1999
Megaworld Foundation initially offered scholarship grants
to 70 engineering and architecture students of the
University of the Philippines and Mapua Institute of
Technology. In 2000 more universities benefited from the
scholarship grant as the foundation included the
University of
Santo Tomas,
University of the East, Far Eastern University, Pamantasan
ng Lungsod ng Maynila and the
Polytechnic
University
of the Philippines in the program.
In 2005
the foundation formulated a leadership grant as one of its
scholarship programs, aiming to support the country’s
future leaders by providing the grant to students who
excel both in their academic and leadership endeavors.
Forever
commitment
COLLECTIVELY recognized as an essential component in the
process of national development, the ingrained purpose of
investment in education is to help people with knowledge,
skills, values and attitudes to improve their caliber of
life, develop their productivity, and allow them to
participate more fully in the development course.
Business
leaders believe that investment in education becomes an
ingredient in the recipe to help sustain relative
advantage in an increasingly competitive international
economic environment.
Say,
successful changeover from basic industry to more advanced
technology, from manufacturing to delegation of services,
which all rely on the quality of human capital. And the
quality of human capital depends to a large extent on
investment in education—as we can’t disregard that many
companies are now strongly giving attention to.
Evidently,
in an era of deep emergency in the local educational
structure, the private sector will continue to readily
support the system that is necessary for economic
development, together with development of appropriate
skills for the workforce. Even though depressing,
increasing educational crisis will continue to drive more
integrated and noble companies to reverse the learning
system.
Luz of
Ayala Foundation underscores that “all we want is to
improve the quality of life for Filipinos and try to
alleviate poverty in all its forms. The forms are not
merely financial or material. There are other
manifestations of poverty, particularly in an educational
point of view. Therefore, we have to look at it at a very
holistic fashion.”
He adds:
“The foundation is a forever commitment. We did not set it
out and put plans of shutting it down. It was set up to
address the needs of the country. The strategies will
change but the need will remain. We have to look at how we
focus our projects for the underprivileged—that is what we
exist to do.” (With Romy Antonette Peña) |
