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THE government needs about P9.8 billion investment to
meet the basic education requirements of the Autonomous Region in
Muslim Minadanao (ARMM) for over five years, an Asian Development
Bank (ADB) study said.
The study titled, “Philippines: Development of Basic
Education in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao,” said that
the ARMM Basic Education Development Plan for 2007 to 2016 will
address poverty, illiteracy, poor access to basic services, among
others.
The plan targets to achieve
universal access to formal basic education and to sustain the
increased participating rate, achieve greater quality and relevance
in formal basic education through the adoption of more efficient and
effective approaches and to establish and implement an efficient and
sustainable decentralized management system for basic education in
ARMM for both public and private schools.
The ADB study showed that in ARMM
the survival rate from Grade 1 to 6 is only 31.5 percent, while it
is 67 percent for the entire country. This suggests that only 46
percent of Grade 1 students reach Grade 4 in ARMM, which is in
contrast to 76 percent for the rest of the country.
At secondary school levels,
figures for ARMM indicate only 13 percent of Grade 1 pupils reach
4th year high school compared with 41 percent nationally.
Participation rates in elementary
and secondary schools in ARMM stood at 78 percent and 42 percent,
respectively, which are low even when compared with Mindanao’s
overall participation rate of 94 percent and 54 percent, for grade
school and high school.
The ADB said a chronic shortage
of schools and classrooms has affected the rates of participation
and survival in basic education in ARMM.
It also said that the functional
literacy rates in Muslim communities are the lowest in the country,
which reflects the inability of the ARMM education system to provide
educational opportunities for all, and to retain pupils long enough
to build basic reading and writing skills.
 --Darwin
G. Amojelar
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