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By Luis Carlo S. Liberato, OFW Journalism
Consortium
DISTANCE not only makes the heart grow fonder;
it has also kept most children of women overseas Filipino workers
from dropping out of school.
Thus writes economist Alvin Ang of the
University of Santo Tomas in his study titled “Determining the
Social Costs of Overseas Filipino Workers’ Remittances: A Check
through Education Indicators.”
Amid the tide of a nationwide rise in dropouts
and the slump in kids’ school participation and cohort survival,
Ang rides against the commonly held belief that distant parenting
strategy doesn’t work.
He asserts a contrarian belief that this
strategy keeps OFW children in high school.
The results for children of OFWs are even more
encouraging, says Ang of the UST Social Research Center, if women
are the ones abroad.
Women’s migration pushes children to stay in
school, Ang told the OFW Journalism Consortium.
Using mathematical formulas in Economics called
“regressions,” Ang’s study showed that international migration
positively affects education indicators such as dropouts, school
participation, and cohort survival.
The effect is also regardless of gender, his
computations revealed.
Dropout rates lessen in number, while school
participation and cohort survival rates rise. It’s just that in
all three indicators, women get more positive results, Ang said.
Ang admitted getting surprised with the results,
knowing firsthand the social costs associated with parental absence:
he was away from his family for a long time in Japan on a study
grant.
Contrast also Ang’s findings with data from
the Department of Education: secondary education dropout rates
nationwide rose as of school year 2005 to 2006.
Dropout rates for both elementary and secondary
levels, according to the government education agency, went up by
above 7 percent and nearly 13 percent in school year 2005 to 2006,
from 6.98 percent and 7.99 percent, respectively, in school year
2004 to 2005.
High cost of education coupled by lingering
poverty has been cited by pundits as reasons for these increases.
Ang’s study cited the reasons for those who
didn’t drop out.
Numbers
In Ang’s study, which was presented at the
Sixth National Social Science Congress in May, overseas migration of
parents increases cohort survival rates and school participation
rates.
His data on cohort survival and school
participation looked at children belonging to the 10–14 and
15–19 years-old age groups, across Philippine regions, as well as
the number of male and female OFWs coming from the annual Survey on
Overseas Filipinos.
As for dropout rates, the age bracket of his
data covers 13 to 16 years old.
He chose these age brackets because a recent
paper by another economist, Rosemarie Edillon of the Asia-Pacific
Policy Center, wrote that high-school children of OFWs “are worst
off in terms of time and money.”
This was where Ang hurled what he called
“interesting conjectures.”
“The absence of the female migrant is a strong
incentive to remain in school . . . [indicating] that OFW children
are studying hard despite the absence of mothers [and] thereby
dispelling that they are worst off.”
He added that “absent mothers increase the
chance of children completing [high school].”
But if the mother is here in the Philippines,
all the more that “children want her attention,” says Ang.
He posited that children adjust to a situation
of parental absence while children with no OFW parents prefer the
“traditional family set-up” where both parents are present.
Still, money is part of the story: Ang’s data
were on the number of OFWs, not on remittances.
While his study doesn’t mean discouraging
results for male OFWs who also bankroll children’s education, Ang
noted women OFWs make the difference.
“The absence of mothers is already the
worst-case scenario for a [Filipino] family tradition where the
father is the breadwinner, so children really must study hard.”
Of course, he says “it is but proper [for the
children] to study hard, returning the sacrifice and finishing
[school] on time.”
Honors
Two children of OFWs the OFW Journalism
Consortium talked to prove Ang’s point.
Shara Mae Lirag is a candidate for honor roll in
government-run Bagumbong High School while Elaine Eusebio, likewise,
in privately run Manila Cathedral School.
Books are piled across the Lirag household
dining table where 14-year-old Shara Mae was set to start her
two-hour daily study regimen.
The house is quiet, like there’s an unwritten
rule for the Lirag brood of four girls to mimic a monastery.
“If I don’t want to be disturbed, I also
don’t want to disturb others [my three sisters] while they’re
studying,” she says.
The two-week-old message from her mother Erma in
the United Arab Emirates is still stored in her mobile phone.
Shara’s mother wants her to gun for an academic scholarship.
Reference to that message rattled her and begs
off to go back to studying.
Her father Constancio, 48, says seeing their
children get college degrees is their only wish.
He says wife Erma sends P5,000 every month for
the school needs of Shara and her sister Hanna Nicole.
“That’s a big help since they’re both in
public school,” Mr. Lirag said adding the money goes to class
projects and school supplies.
Mr. Lirag said he helps augment the family
income with his earning as a passenger jeepney driver plying the
Taft Avenue route.
I’m just a high-school graduate, Mr. Lirag
said. They could be more than that, he added waving his hand toward
daughter Shara lost in her book.
A competitive class environment, meanwhile, is
what also drives Ms. Eusebio, an incoming sophomore at Manila
Cathedral School.
She says she doesn’t want to frustrate his
father Hector, who works in a car painting company in the Kingdom of
Saudi Arabia.
Still, she also considers studying hard
self-motivated.
“The academic honor was a fruit of all my
sacrifices.”
Her father, whom she hasn’t seen for a year,
remits at least P15,000 monthly.
“The money is primarily for Elaine’s
studies, and only a few from those amounts are spent for other
purposes,” said Marites Eusebio, Elaine’s mother.
Ang said that children of OFWs like Lirag and
Eusebio are also pressured to avoid getting into the dropout roll.
Previous studies, including some surveys, had
pointed to the fact that children of OFW parents are academic
achievers or have met school requirements.
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