Professional Documents
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Vantage Point
By Luis V. Teodoro
More than 9 million students in both private and public schools had enrolled online for
schoolyear 2020-2021 as the month of June ended. The resumption of K-12 classes is
scheduled for Aug. 24 this year, hence the Department of Education’s (DepEd) reserving
the entire month of June for registration, and later extending it till July.
Briones. Presumably because DepEd was aware of the technological, financial, and
other differences among the millions of Filipino families with school-age children,
Secretary Briones expected many of them to forego their enrollment during the
COVID-19 public health emergency. Some 5 million children will most probably not
As Bishop Roberto Mallari, who chairs the Episcopal Commission on Catechesis and
Catholic Education of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines pointed out
during a May interview with media, many families “are not prepared financially [and]
technologically” for online learning. Some can’t afford the computers or even smart
phones needed, or to subscribe to Wi-Fi providers and master the use of the technology
involved within a short two months. As some news reports have noted, some teachers
are similarly unprepared, either because they don’t have the devices needed and can’t
country, the connections are still either too weak or nonexistent not only in those
remote localities from where students have had to walk for kilometers and cross rivers
to the nearest school during pre-pandemic times, but even in some urban areas.
The economic and class divide of Philippine society has long been a fundamental issue
in Philippine education. Students from rich families based in the cities and some highly
urbanized municipalities have more access to usually private and expensive schools,
while those from poor families are plagued by a lack of classrooms and teachers, and
almost inaccessible public schools with limited resources that teachers themselves are
But it seems that even the former have not really benefited as much as expected from
their privileged status. A 2018 study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
claims 98% literacy, hardly fared any better in science and mathematics either: they
It has been argued that the PISA findings are the results of the fact that those tested
mostly came from public schools and therefore do not provide any indication of the
alleged superiority of private institutions. But they nevertheless confirm the reality of
the perennial crisis of Philippine education evident in the quality of its products. Many
Filipinos can’t really read or even do simple arithmetic. Science is alien territory for the
A 2017 study by an international news website also found that Filipinos aged 16 to 64
are the third most ignorant of key public issues among the citizens of 36 countries. That
finding is validated by, among other indicators, the epidemic of fact- and
logic-challenged posts that appear in social media, and by the popularity rather than
There is, indeed, an education class divide between poor and rich students in the
Philippines. There is also the same divide between poor and rich countries. But even a
less developed country can still invest heavily on education if it is its first priority. The
2018 PISA results were dominated by Chinese students from four less affluent regions
The Philippines just doesn’t invest as much on education as its neighbors Thailand,
Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei, Singapore, Indonesia and even Laos. The biggest share of
the annual budget goes to education as mandated by the 1987 Constitution, but the
3.4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) appropriated for it is still much less than the
United Nations standard of at least 6%. In 2019, Congress even cut the DepEd’s
proposed 2020 budget despite the need for more classrooms and teachers.
It need hardly be said that how much a country spends on education helps decide the
quality of school facilities and its teachers, and therefore the quality of its students.
Despite the digital age, many public schools still lack not only computers but even
books, desks and blackboards. There is also a shortfall in the supply of public school
teachers, due in part to their being among the lowest-paid among government
It need hardly be said that the dismal showing of Filipino students in reading
contempt for learning evident in many sectors of the population are in conflict with the
politics. Citizens who know little or nothing, or are misinformed about the most pressing
issues, cannot intelligently make the decisions on which democratic, honest and
The sorry state of education helps explain the fragility of what passes for democracy in
the Philippines. It is of course possible, although never explicitly stated, that keeping
much of the population ignorant best serves the interests of the political oligarchy that
rules the country. A dumb constituency is after all the surest guarantee of keeping
This is the already troubled and troubling context in which the COVID-19 pandemic has
forced the entire educational system to shift from traditional face-to-face classroom
As expected, the better-endowed and equipped schools are adopting various ways to
address the problems involved. In higher education, the leading universities, such as
the University of the Philippines, Ateneo de Manila University, and De La Salle University
are also developing their respective versions of remote learning methods to best serve
their students and to train their faculty in them. But at both the K-12 and much of the
tertiary level, there are still the differences in capability, resources and training between
To the longstanding problems of Philippine education have thus been added the
difficulties posed by the shift to online teaching. These difficulties boil down to the
possibility that the schools may not effectively impart the literacy and numeracy skills
required at the basic level, and, at the collegiate level, the respect for and commitment
to knowledge and the critical outlook that authentic tertiary education is supposed to
impart to the citizens of a democracy. As things now stand, the crisis of Philippine
education is likely to reach its most acute stage in these extraordinary times because of
the public health crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as a less than capable
system flounders in the sea of troubles unleashed by the necessary shift to remote
learning.
https://www.bworldonline.com/philippine-education-in-crisis/