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By Jaileen F. Jimeno,
Philippine Center For Investigative Journalism
First of three parts
MAGUINDANAO: Ten-year-old Dino
and two younger boys were harassing a hapless chicken under a
neighbor’s nipa house. Covered with dust, the boys obviously
hadn’t had a bath just yet that day, and had chosen to go after
the chicken, while other children in this village trooped to a
nearby river to soak and to play.
It looked like a typical village
scene— only that it was the middle of a school day and Dino (not
his real name) and many children should have been in class. But the
classrooms in his school were shuttered, because its four teachers
were attending a meeting in the capital.
In fact, they had been
away—supposedly for meetings—for two weeks already, and no one
was sure when they would be returning. Residents here also said the
primary school had had more class suspensions than actual sessions,
which made the children quite happy, but had their parents upset.
A mother of three whose children
go to the same school as Dino’s said she and other parents had
repeatedly pleaded with local education officials to appoint more
teachers. “We complained because classes are rarely held,” said
the parent, who like several interviewees here requested anonymity
for herself and this town. “They told us to go to the district
office ourselves and request regular teachers.”
Achieving universal primary
education is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
that the Philippines has committed itself to achieve by 2015. In its
midterm progress report on the development goals released last year,
however, the government conceded that this was one of the targets it
was unlikely to meet seven years from now.
Floundering goals
Since the Arroyo administration
came to power in 2001, all key performance indicators in education
in fact have floundered. The percentage of schoolchildren who reach
up to grade six, for instance, is down from a high of 75.9 percent
in 2001 to 69.9 percent in 2006. Elementary dropout rate in 2001 was
5.75 percent, but went up to 7.36 in 2006. Those who repeat a grade
is also up, from 1.95 percent in 2001 to 2.89 percent in 2006.
It’s not hard to see what led
to these numbers, especially in this province that is about 1,000
kilometers south of Manila. Yet Maguindanao is not the only place in
the Philippines suffering from chronic lack of teachers, only one of
the many problems bedeviling schools here and elsewhere in the
country, including the prosperous urban areas. In large part, these
problems can be traced to two main factors: a decline in per capita
spending for education and a booming population.
Per capita spending for education
in 1996 was pegged at P1,108. In 2006, it was merely P1,014. The
figure was even lower in 2005, at P975. In the last decade, the
highest per capita spending for education was P1,337, and that was
back in 1998. All these were even as the country’s population
continued to climb, ensuring a deluge of students for decades.
But here in Maguindanao, the
situation is made worse by bursts of armed conflict that keep
students and their teachers away from schools for days on end, as
well as by apparently skewed local priorities.
As a result, the Philippine Human
Development Report of 2005 says only 39.7 percent of adults in
Maguindanao have six years of basic education, compared to the
national average of 84 percent. The literacy rate in Maguindanao is
66.27, compared to the national average of 92.3. In 1994, the
Philippines’ literacy rate was recorded at 93.9 percent.
Wrong figures?
Maguindanao is one of eight
provinces belonging to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
Official statistics show that more than half of the region’s
estimated three million people live in extreme poverty.
The National Statistical
Coordination Board estimated in 2003 that poverty incidence in
Maguindanao was at 60.4 percent. This makes many of the province’s
half a million people the target beneficiaries of Millennium
Development Goal number one, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty
and hunger.
Provincial administrator Norie
Unas, however, has begged to disagree with the statistical board’s
2003 figure. “We have castigated the NSO [National Statistics
Office, which did the survey] for that,” he told the Philippine
Center for Investigative Journalism late last year.
He said ARMM’s Regional
Planning and Development Office has a lot of socio-economic
indicators “that prove the releases of the NSO are wrong.” He
did not go into specifics, but made it a point to stress that he was
told by NSO that “the bases of lining up Maguindanao among the
poorest of the provinces [were] data prior to the administration of
Governor [Andal] Ampatuan.”
Ampatuan began his term in 2001.
He was reelected in 2004, and another win in 2007 now has him
serving his third and last term. Since the Philippine Center for
Investigative Journalism interviewed Unas, the National Statistical
Coordination Board has released fresh figures that show the poverty
incidence in Maguindanao shooting up to 62 percent in 2006, a steep
rise from 41.6 percent in 1997. The province is now the third
poorest in the country, coming after Tawi-Tawi and Zamboanga del
Norte.
In any case, Unas may find it
hard to argue with development experts who say education is crucial
in fighting poverty. University of the Philippines College of
Education Dean Vivien Talisayon said “education levels the playing
field.”
Mix of rich, poor
There is much leveling to do in
Maguindanao. When wails of sirens break the silence enveloping most
farming villages near the highway, vehicles immediately take the
shoulder to make way for long convoys of hulking SUVs. According to
residents, the convoys belong to politicians who may be on their way
to Cotabato City or are bringing their children to school that are
likely outside the province.
Maguindanao’s well-scrubbed and
powerful send their children to private schools either in Cotabato
or Davao City, perhaps occasioned by the lack of breathing room in
the public schools here. In chicken-chasing Dino’s school, there
are 278 students and four classrooms, which if made to the standards
of the Department of Education should measure about 63 square meters
each.
In school year 2005-2006,
Maguindanao’s education department reported an enrollment of
135,990 students in elementary school, the highest in ARMM. But says
a study funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) from August 2005
up to January 2007, the schools counted only 50,204 usable seats for
the students.
There was also a critical
shortage of textbooks. While elementary students were already
numbering more than 100,000, the schools had a total of only 30,952
textbooks for Math, 34,039 for English, 28,810 for Filipino, and
25,697 for Science.
Nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) working here have yet to come up with a solution to the
textbook shortage, but one group has shanghaied parents to make
chairs, benches, and tables, which are then donated to their
barangay schools.
It could well be that the schools
were simply overwhelmed by the sudden surge in student numbers, and
thus found themselves with all sorts of shortages. Last October, the
province’s planning office was jolted by the preliminary results
of the government’s census: Maguindanao registered a population
growth rate of 5.4 percent, more than twice the national figure of
2.3 percent. In 2000, Maguindanao already had one of the highest
population growth rates in the country, at 4.16 percent.
Defying trends
“The recent census brought us
some almost incredible figure of increase,” Unas said. “We
defied established demographic trends.” He added that this was
probably because of an improved peace and order situation in
Maguindanao, prompting people from other Mindanao provinces to
settle here. Yet Maguindanao sees few people in the streets after
sundown, a sign of a still-jittery population that has lived with
the internecine fighting between clans, warlords, and government
troops, and secessionist forces. Most people interviewed by
Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism declined to be named,
and this is telling in itself.
The province’s planning office,
meanwhile, said the increase in population growth rate may be the
result of factors like multiple marriages, teenage marriages, return
of overseas Filipino workers, late registration of newborns, and
resettlement of former rebels. It also admitted to a lack of an
effective, province-wide reproductive health program.
Many problems of the schools’,
however, would have probably been eased had the local government
decided to pick up the slack in the national government’s spending
for education.
For sure, the province’s
internal revenue allotment has not been measly. In 2005, it received
over P555 million in internal revenue allotment. The next year, it
got P633 million.
Big personnel budget
Based on its Commission on Audit
submissions in 2005 and 2006, the province spent as much as 30
percent of its budget on personnel salaries. In fact, it allocated
an additional P30 million for its employees in 2006, raising the
budget from P154 million in 2005 to P185 million the following year.
Its maintenance and other operating expenses for those two years
were more than half its total budget, from P294 million in 2005, to
P389 million in 2006.
In 2006, it allocated P10 million
for the secretary to the Sangguniang Panlalawigan, while the
provincial treasurer – who collected P1.1 million from taxpayers
in 2005 and P2.7 million in 2006 – was allotted P16.8 million.
By comparison, it set aside
P238,397 for the salary of its education personnel, with a
maintenance and operating expense of P1.6 million for that
department.
5 teachers per barangay
Data from Maguindanao office of
the Department of Education show that the province’s elementary
and high schools have a total of 1,340 permanent teachers and 52
contractual teachers. That means only an average of less than five
teachers in each of Maguindanao’s 279 barangay or villages.
The number of teachers who
actually teach, however, diminishes when they are called on to
handle administrative matters. Dino’s teacher, for example, is
also the school principal, which is why the classes she handles are
suspended whenever she has meetings or seminars to attend either in
the capital, Shariff Aguak, or the ARMM’s seat of power, Cotabato
City.
The schoolteachers, already few
in number, complain that their pay is often delayed, sometimes even
for months. With little incentive for professionals to apply, there
is thus a heavy dependence on volunteer teachers, who have usually
reached high school at least and are able to teach basic reading and
writing. These volunteer teachers get about P3,000 per month. Often,
half the amount is sourced from barangay funds, while parents chip
in to cover the other half. Problems occur whenever some parents are
unable to cough up their share.
One mother here said that each
family contributes P30 every month for each child it sends to
school. She and her husband have three school-age children, and they
have to come up with P90 each month; she has resorted to selling
charcoal to raise the amount.
The mother said she dreads the
time when they will have to produce P50 every day for the
transportation fare of each of their children, who will have to go
farther to attend grades 5 and 6.
Their barangay is five kilometers
of boulders-strewn road away from the highway, accessible only by
habal-habal or motorcycles for hire. From there, the children would
have to take another ride before reaching a school that conducts
classes in grade levels higher than the one they are now attending.
Asked for the province’s budget
allocations for education and the building of classrooms since 2001,
Maguindanao’s budget office said it had “no data” on these
items.
No school built since 2001
Data from both the province’s
budget and education offices indicate, however, that the province
has not allocated any part of its public-works fund to build schools
since 2001.
Still, the province has poured
millions of pesos into other infrastructure projects. In 2006 alone,
the 22-town province spent more than P91 million in 37 road
rehabilitation projects, with just one costing less than P1 million.
Roughly a third of the projects were for roads in Shariff Aguak.
An insider from the provincial
capitol said that last year, the planning office had tried to set
aside P100,000 for an information campaign to familiarize the
province’s mayors with the Millennium Development Goals. “We
wanted to incorporate the MDGs in the province’s goals,” said
the insider, “but the proposal and the funding was junked.”
And that may be why, when an ARMM
information officer was queried for data on the region’s programs
to realize the development goals, he had to ask what the three
letters meant.
Meantime, Dino may have
difficulty recognizing any letter of the alphabet. At 10, he is
still unable to read.
To be continued
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