The singing into law by President Aquino of the Iskolar ng Bayan Program, now Republic Act 10648, is a positive development for the future of the Philippines.
The top 10 graduates of every public high school in the country will now receive scholarships to the 112 state colleges and universities (SUCs) to pursue their studies. The target is that 80,000 deserving students will be given the financial assistance they need to move to higher education. While there are many private scholarship programs to help these students, this move by the government is important and timely.
The specifics of the program are that top 10 graduates of every public high school will be entitled to admission to the SUC of his or her choice within his or her province, without having to pay for first-year tuition and miscellaneous fees..
Often, programs like this are inadequate and do not go far enough. We would have liked to see an expanded program in terms of keeping these students in higher education for the duration of their courses. However, if they do well in their studies and qualify, they will continue to receive financial help through the financial-aid programs of the Commission on Higher Education (CHED).
In the 2015 national budget, SUCs have a total of P3.5 billion available for scholarships, apart from the CHED’s P2.2-billion allotment for student financial aid.
In looking at the specifics of the law, some forethought and common sense was put into the details. Since the size of graduating classes around the country vary so much, public high schools with more than 1,000 graduates will be entitled to one additional college scholarship slot for every 500 graduates granted to graduates whose ranks immediately follow the top 10.
The Philippine education system always comes under much criticism, everything from the size of the classes to teacher qualifications. Contracts for books have been tainted with corruption from time to time and the quality of the materials are sometimes suspect. Further, our per-pupil expenditure is much less than acceptable by international standards.
While this may all be true, the key priority on a national level is to keep students learning for as long as possible and this new program of financial assistance for higher education is vitally important.
This law is obviously not going to solve the nation’s education deficiencies. However, sometimes a problem is best solved with successful individual steps made one at a time. In education, the single most step is making sure that one individual student is given every chance to succeed.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano