The deteriorating education system and worsening poverty situation

The decrease in budget allocation also affects access to basic and secondary education. Public schools are not being given budgets for Maintenance, Operating, and Other Expenses (MOOE) such as repairs and purchases of furniture, fixtures and equipment, and even in paying for the salaries of maintenance personnel. Thus, this is being shouldered by parents in the form of fees and donations.

Tertiary education

If the Macapagal-Arroyo administration has been remiss in its obligation to provide basic and secondary education to the Filipino youth, it has totally turned its back in providing access to tertiary education. Consistent with its deregulation and privatization thrusts, it has been reducing its allocation for state universities and colleges forcing the latter to increase its tuition and other fees.

The University of the Philippines implemented a 300 percent increase in its tuition from P300 ($6.55) per unit to P1, 000 ($21.86) per unit. Thus, the average tuition a UP student pays increased from P6, 000 to P20, 000 ($218 to $437) per semester. Already, UP has been experiencing an increase in its no-show rate which reflects the percentage of passers of the UP College Admission Test (UPCAT) who did not enrol. As it is, students from public schools, except those from science high schools and pilot classes, are at a disadvantage because of the competitive entrance exams considering the deteriorating quality of public school education. With the new tuition rates, more and more students from the poor majority who passed the UPCAT, would not be able to enrol at UP.

If UP and other state colleges and universities are becoming inaccessible, much more are the private schools. The DepEd has already rescinded its memorandum limiting automatic tuition increases to the annual inflation rate.

Poverty as the root cause

The decreasing government allocation for education is not the sole reason, and the only accountability of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration, for its failure to provide access to education to majority of the Filipino people. Its economic policies of liberalization, deregulation, and privatization which results in spikes in prices and rates of basic goods, services, and utilities, and increasing unemployment and underemployment leading to the worsening of the poverty situation is the biggest reason for the decreasing enrolment rates and increasing drop-out rates.

With around 65 million Filipinos or about 80 percent of the population trying to survive on P96 ($2) or less per day, how can a family afford the school uniforms, the transportation to and from school, the expenses for school supplies and projects, the miscellaneous expenses, and the food for the studying sibling? More than this, with the worsening unemployment problem and poverty situation, each member of the family is being expected to contribute to the family income. Most, if not all, out-of-school children are on the streets begging, selling cigarettes, candies, garlands, and assorted foodstuffs or things, or doing odd jobs.

The wrong solution

The provision of more training centers by TESDA is not only a wrong solution, it is at best a futile effort. More and more college graduates are not being able to get jobs. Much less are the chances of those who have only undergone vocational training.

The Marcos administration, during the 1970s has also tried the same approach. It instituted the National College Entrance Examinations (NCEE) to screen those who could enter college and to promote vocational training. It established the National Manpower Youth Council with the very same functions that TESDA has today.

It geared the educational system towards supplying cheap labor to multinational corporations. It also promoted a labor export policy supposedly as a temporary measure to mitigate the unemployment problem.

When all things failed, it tightened its grip to power and tried to suppress the growing discontent and intensifying protests by attacking the people and violating human rights with impunity.

Don’t all these sound familiar? Don’t you feel that we are in the same situation all over again, only it has become worse? Well, the Macapagal-Arroyo administration has a lot in common with the Marcos dictatorship, not only in terms of policies but it is also approximating the human rights record and the corruption scandals of the Marcoses. No wonder it seems so easy for them to strike a deal with the Marcos family. But if the Macapagal-Arroyo administration persists in pursuing the same path as the Marcos dictatorship, it will also share its fate. Bulatlat