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The Department of Education expects 20.7 million
students to attend classes today, approximately 13.9 million in the
elementary grades and the remaining 6.8 in high school. College
enrollment is expected to reach 400,000.
The number of students who will
not go to school, however, is deemed to be sizeable. First-time
enrollment in Grade One is expected to decline. The Manila Bulletin
on June 4 quoted Education Secretary Jesli Lapus saying that one
million six-year-olds will be left out when schools open June 10.
Many students scheduled to resume their classes at different grades
(elementary) and years (secondary) will not show up. Many secondary
graduates poised to join the college freshman class will miss
school. Plenty of no-shows, too, on other levels.
The major reason is poverty.
Thousands of parents and guardians do not have the money to send
their children to school, beginning Grade One. Basic education is
free and universal, yes, but schooling these days even at
“kinder” grades takes money—for transportation, food, school
projects and classroom supplies.
Secretary Lapus last month said
he would see to it that parents who do not send their children to
school are arrested or sanctioned one way or another. The miscreant
parents, however, have no choice. Keeping their kids out of school
means less family expense and a way to make them work to supplement
family income.
The young people who missed
school are likely to be part of a permanent underclass unable to
participate in an important nationwide experience: schooling. The
public school system is a vital linchpin of the national life that
welds the country together. The absence of poverty-stricken young
people in the classroom will surely have grave repercussions in the
future, in personal losses and in the wealth of potential lost to
society.
Are the youth in school a
fortunate lot then? Yes, if they could sustain their studies,
graduate to high school and earn a diploma in college. Experience
however shows declining enrollment at all levels, students dropping
out for numerous reasons, but principally poverty.
For every 100 that started Grade
One, only 66 will finish elementary education. Of those who
completed elementary, only 44 will finish high school. And of those
44 who finish high school, only 18 finish college. That’s 18 out
of 100. Less than one out of every five students, says Sen. Mar
Roxas, who has introduced a reform bill to make schooling less
expensive and to increase student enrollment and completion.
The Alliance of Concerned
Teachers, a militant group that keeps count, says 3.3 million
children, aged six to 15, are out of school. The number for 2002 was
1.86 million out of school, ACT president Antonio Tinio adds.
“School dropouts make up our
biggest social problem because they perpetuate poverty,” writes
our political analyst Juan T. Gatbonton. “Dropouts make poverty a
generational problem, because they cannot function in the modern
society.”
The dropouts are the shame of the
education system and a failure of society. We cannot claim to be a
developed country if we allow our children to keep falling from the
education ladder.
Conditional cash transfer
ACT recommends that the
government expand its school feeding program and provide students
free public transportation. These and reducing contributions will
motivate parents to send their children to school, the group says.
Roxas’s Senate Bill No. 2294
seeks, among others, to add two years to basic education to keep up
with world standards and to mandate the use of Filipino as medium of
instruction from Grade One to Grade Three. It mandates a
school-feeding program for Grades 1 and 2 students in the poorest
provinces and municipalities.
Mr. Gatbonton believes one way
out of the school-leaving problem is a social model that “pays”
students to stay in school and that gives parents a regular stipend
on condition that they enroll their child. Such models have worked
successfully in about 20 countries, including Brazil, Indonesia, the
United States and Turkey.
The Department of Social Welfare
and Development’s conditional cash transfer program, Ahon
Pamilyang Pilipino, works out on that principle. The DSWD provides
cash benefits to families on condition their children go to school
and get regular health checkups.
The maximum benefit, P1,400 a
month, is usually entrusted to the mother who, if she’s pregnant,
is required to receive pre- and postnatal care. In the beginning,
the program targets the poorest 20 municipalities.
An 85-percent school attendance
is mandatory. Compliance with the rules is verified. Families
receive full benefits only when conditions are met.
Mexico’s Oportunidades and New
York City’s Opportunity NYC have increased school enrollment and
completion rates. School children are fed at no cost, receive
regular health checkups and are motivated to finish schooling.
The government’s conditional
cash transfer program is an investment in education and the future.
It is not a dole-out but a social experiment that makes
beneficiaries fully responsible for their children’s learning and
that helps the youth stay in school.
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