Poor education spending blamed for education crisis
Back-to-school woes worse than ever
While the Department of Education adopted a “business-as-usual” attitude in explaining preparations for the school opening, the Kabataan Party and the National Union of Students of the Philippines said students and teachers are also getting ready on Monday to take the government to task for its abandonment of education as they provide an alternative analysis of the country’s educational system.
“DepEd claims the government is prepared for the school opening but the dismal state of classrooms and facilities and the severe shortage of teachers in public elementary and high schools nationwide say otherwise,” Kabataan Party Vice President Carl Marc Ramota said.
Ramota said classrooms in the Philippines is among the most crowded in Asia.
Data from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics show that class size in the Philippine public elementary schools (43.9) pales in comparison to Malaysia (31.7), Thailand (22.9), Japan (28.6) and even in India (40).
He said the disparity between the Philippines and other Asian countries in class size was even bigger in the high school level. In the same survey, the country registered an average high school class size of 56.1, higher than Malaysia’s 34, Thailand’s 41.5, Japan’s 33.9 and India’s 39.
” The same problems continue to haunt the education sector year after year. The shortages in classrooms and chairs worsened with the transfer of students from private to public schools. Many middle-income families that cannot afford the high tuition in private schools are transferring their children to the public schools, which offer free tuition and books.”
He said DepEd’s own studies reveal that public schools nationwide are in decrepit
conditions. Some 80 percent of them have no running water, 60 percent have no toilets, 40 percent have no ceilings and 50 percent have no electricity.
Ramota said government misprioritization and poor education spending aggravated by rampant graft and corruption were to be blamed for worsening crisis in education.
In 2004, education spending dropped to 14.9 percent of the national budget from 19.3 percent in 1997 and it continued to decline ever since, he said. On the other hand, government spending on debt payments shot up from 15.9 percent in 1997 to almost 40 percent of the national budget at present.
He added that the Philippine government is spending only an average of 3 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product on public educational institutions. In 2003, the country spent a measly 3.3 percent for education. This pales in comparison to its neighboring countries Malaysia (7.4 percent) and Thailand (4 percent). It is also lower than the 4 percent average for all countries that were included in the World Education Indicators in 2006.
The minimum prescribed standard for education spending set by UNESCO is 6 percent of a country’s GDP.
Ramota said the Philippines is also lagging behind its Asian counterparts in public expenditure on education as a percentage of total public spending.
At all level s of education, the Philippines is only spending 17.2 percent compared to Thailand’s 40 percent and Malaysia’s 28 percent.
Translating this into expenditures per student, he said the same study shows that the Philippine education spending is still way below its Asian competitors.
The country spends 500, 505 and 1,717 dollars (purchasing power parity) for primary education, secondary education and tertiary education, respectively. The Philippines lags behind Malaysia (1,830, 2,920 and 10,792 dollars) and Thailand (3,442, 2,484 and 4,474 PPP dollars).
“The government has been formulating several education policies and programs with the aim of improving the quality of education in the country but it is missing the most important and decisive factor to meet this goal – spending more on education. Unfortunately, government spending on education has been the complete opposite in the past years.”
“Education is an avowed priority of the State but under the present administration, like its predecessors, it does not draw an ounce of sympathy from the authorities.”