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By Karol Anne M. Ilagan Philippine
Center For Investigative Journalism
(Editor’s note: The first
part discussed problems of providing universal primary education,
one of the eight Millennium Development Goals that the Philippines
is committed to. The report cited examples in Maguindanao that are
similar to problems experienced in other parts of the country.)
Second of three parts
LAS PIñAS CITY: When the latest
results of the National Achievement Test for grade 6 students
came out in June 2007, this southern Metro Manila city got the
fourth-highest score in the National Capital Region, adding yet
another item in Las Piñas’s growing list of achievements.
An important residential,
commercial and industrial city for decades now, Las Piñas enjoys
one of the highest per capita income in Metro Manila and has almost
90 percent of its labor force employed. Its local government has
also been recognized for its massive social development projects.
Consistently, it has been a recipient of awards for good governance
and excellent city management.
But to officials and education
leaders in Las Piñas, the city’s students could have performed
better and landed number 1 in the National Achievement Test, that
assesses the abilities and skills of grade 6 pupils in all public
and private elementary schools.
It’s not just because this is a
city that is particularly driven to excel. It’s also because a
better learning environment for pupils and more efficient working
conditions for teachers in the city would have probably yielded
higher National Achievement Test scores for its students, said Dr.
Yolanda Quijano, Bureau of Elementary Education chief.
Shortage of teachers
Unfortunately, for several years
now, Las Piñas has been experiencing severe teacher-and-classroom
shortage. This, in turn has consistently earned the city red marks
in the Department of Education’s Basic Education Information
System, and compromised the kind of education its public schools
have been offering students.
In general, there is greater
access to public schools in cities than in provinces. But the
quality of education being offered in urban areas may not
necessarily be better. In Las Piñas, the ever-growing number of
enrollees to its public schools each year has put a strain on a
system already suffering from insufficient funding, ensuring that
learning conditions here would be poor.
Some of the city’s public
schools have even resorted to holding three shifts of classes to
accommodate a constant surge in the number of students, who are
crammed cheek by jowl into classrooms where teachers are literally
up against a wall the whole time.
“It’s noisy when there are
many students [in a room],” said Angie San Buenaventura, who will
be in fifth grade this June at Talon Elementary School. “It’s
hot, too. It makes me want to sleep most of the time.”
“When you should be writing,”
said 11-year-old Christian Alimento of Doña Manuela Elementary
School, “you just wipe and wipe your sweat.”
Committed, dedicated
That Las Piñas’s students
still managed to score well in the National Achievement Test despite
these conditions is laudable. According to University of the
Philippines College of Education dean, Dr. Vivien Talisayon, much of
that achievement could only be because of the teachers’ apparent
commitment to their work and the pupils’ determination to learn.
Large class sizes are never good
for learning, Talisayon said. The international standard, she added,
is 30 students per class, but in local city schools like those in
Las Piñas, a class of 60 to 70 has become the norm.
Education department data show
that in school year 2007 to 2008 alone, the city’s pupil-classroom
ratio was 122.76, meaning more than 100 pupils used one classroom
each day. This was the highest pupil-room ratio posted in the
National Capital Region in that period. Pasig and San Juan had the
lowest in the region with 49.76.
Las Piñas also had the worst
pupil-teacher ratio in Metro Manila during the past school year,
with 50.54 students to one teacher. By comparison, the national mean
ratio is only within 35 to 40.
The teacher-and-classroom
shortage plagues many public schools across the country. But the
problem is so serious in Metro Manila that it is believed to be
among the main reasons why the National Capital Region has trouble
keeping children in school—and why the region is helping keep the
country from achieving universal primary education by 2015.
The shortage, after all, is not
only a matter of students having no elbowroom or having to fight for
the teacher’s attention.
Talisayon said, “A teacher has
to be very good—top of the line—to handle a large class. If you
can’t even know or memorize the names of your students then
you’re like strangers there [in the classroom].”
An overcrowded classroom limits
the teacher’s ability to deliver lessons effectively and to manage
the class properly. “It’s hard to arrange group activities if
they can hardly move,” the education expert said. “If the
teachers want to see what the students are actually doing, they
might need to use a telescope, and they definitely have to project
their voice.”
Population growth
Education officials and local
government leaders said part of the problem lies in the
Philippines’s fast-growing population. Las Piñas alone has an
annual population growth rate of 2.93 percent. At last count, it
already had 578,699 people.
Besides this, Schools Division
Superintendent Dr. Lourdes Victoriano said the high cost of tuition
in private schools has driven more students to public schools.
Mayor Vergel “Nene” Aguilar,
meanwhile, said officials have also had to deal with the migration
of pupils from nearby cities and towns to the city’s public
schools. This phenomenon, he added, is common most especially in
schools located on the city’s boundaries.
“Patayo ka nga nang patayo ng
buildings, padami naman nang padami ang mga bata [You construct one
building after another, but the children keep on multiplying],”
Aguilar said. This is even as Las Piñas has emerged with the
sixth-lowest net enrollment ratio—71 percent—among the National
Capital Region’s 16 cities and one town in 2007. This means 29
percent of Las Piñas children who should be in school are not
enrolled.
Las Piñas also has the highest
dropout rate (1.24 percent) in Metro Manila, or the highest number
of pupils who leave school during the year, as well as those who
complete the grade level, but fail to enroll the next school year.
Pupils per class
Cramped classrooms may be partly
to blame for this. Pamplona Elementary School-Central teacher Amelia
Ordoñez said that 10 years ago, she used to handle classes of 40
pupils each. Now it’s up to 66 students per class.
“It’s hard to mold discipline
among the pupils if they are too many,” said Ordoñez, who has
been teaching for more than three decades now. “It’s also
difficult to follow up on them or a do a lesson summary per day
because time is very limited.”
She added that in her school, at
least 5 percent of the student population comes from outside Las Piñas.
The latest Department of Education data indicate that Pamplona
Elementary School-Central has a total enrollment of 3,050 with only
17 instructional rooms. An average of 179.41 pupils share one room
each day, the highest number posted among Las Piñas’s 20 public
elementary schools.
The classroom shortage has led
the school to take some drastic measures. For instance, Ordoñez
said, students in grade 1—save for those in the first
section—have been divided into three shifts of four hours each;
all shifts have a 10-minute break. Educators said the daily time
allotment for learning at grade 1 level is 320 minutes, or more than
five hours.
Former Education Undersecretary
Juan Miguel Luz said, “If students don’t learn because they have
less time in class, that is the crux of the low achievement
problem.”
‘Migrant students’
Aguilar reckons that some of the
“migrant students” that have helped bloat the population of
public schools here simply live nearer to these than those within
their own city or town. But he also believes his city has become a
victim of its own good press.
He added that families from
elsewhere move to Las Piñas because of the many services offered by
the local government, such as a city college that offers free
education to poor, but deserving students. Each certified city
resident can also avail of up to P25,000 worth of services a year at
accredited hospitals.
The mayor projects pride as he
rattled off the benefits Las Piñeros enjoy, but it’s clear he
wishes he could be as pleased with Las Piñas’s education
statistics. He has thus proposed the full implementation of a
comprehensive, integrated education program in the city starting in
June, which would include the construction of more school buildings.
Official data show that although
all of the city’s public elementary schools have been experiencing
severe classroom shortage, only eight buildings have been built
since 2002, and these were just for seven elementary schools. The
construction of four more buildings has been proposed, but not yet
bidded out.
The city has also been playing
catch-up in getting new teachers. From 2003 to early 2007, its
public schools hired a total of only 87 new teachers. Last school
year, though, the schools took in 97 more. As of February 2008, the
Education department’s Las Piñas Division hired an additional 118
upon Aguilar’s directive.
More for Manila
Today, Las Piñas has 1,290
elementary level teachers (regular and casual), and its
pupil-teacher ratio is now estimated to be 45.89 to one. The
Education department still considers that as a “moderate teacher
shortage,” but it is nevertheless an improvement from previous
years.
Aguilar said budgetary
constraints have hampered the city’s efforts to keep up with the
burgeoning student population, and Dr. Lorna Madrid, the Education
department’s National Capital Region Planning Unit chief,
confirmed this. For sure, the budget for the elementary level in Las
Piñas has generally increased through the years. This has been far
outpaced, however, by the rise in the number of school-age children
in the city.
There also seems to be a
disparity in financing elementary schools in the region. The latest
data from the Education department and the Department of Budget and
Management show that while the national government spends P3,761.81
per pupil in Las Piñas, it allots P8,327.76 for each student in
Manila.
Ironically, this is because
Manila has more teachers, and is in fact categorized by Department
of Education as having “surplus teacher supervision,” with a
teacher handling between 25 to 30 students. More teachers simply
mean more money spent on salaries from the national budget,
therefore, making Manila’s budget per pupil bigger than that of
Las Piñas and other places that lack teachers.
Madrid said the lack in budget
has made these areas make do with what they have. She also said,
“We don’t just sit here and wait. We tap other sources.”
The private sector is among those
sources. So, too, is the Special Education Fund, which is collected
from the additional 1-percent tax on real property and is allotted
by the Local Government Code to the local school boards.
Big item: Teachers’ pay
In Las Piñas, close to 50
percent of the Special Education Fund has been spent on “personal
services” or teachers’ salaries for the past several years. The
latest data show that it is the source of the salaries of 173
locally funded teachers and 193 non-teaching personnel for both
elementary and secondary public schools in the city.
For 2008, more than P91 million
of the fund is allocated for personal services, which comprise
salaries and wages, allowances, benefits, and financial assistance.
This leaves around P40 million for maintenance and other operating
expenses and P17.8 million for capital outlay.
The maintenance and operative
expenses include recurrent expenses for travel, communication
services, repair and maintenance of government facilities, supplies,
materials, desks, rent, water and electricity, maintenance of motor
vehicles, and discretionary representation expenses.
Capital outlay, meanwhile, refers
to the budget for the acquisition and improvement of sites,
including the construction, replacement, and repair of buildings,
classrooms, libraries, toilets and other structures, furniture,
fixtures, and equipment such as desks and chairs, computers and
books.
Audit queries
The Commission on Audit has found
problems with the Las Piñas school board’s appropriation of a
large part of the Special Education Fund for personal services, even
if the law does not consider these a priority.
The Local Government Code of 1991
(Republic Act 7160) states in part that the annual school board
budget shall give priority to the construction, repair, and
maintenance of school buildings and other facilities of public
elementary and secondary schools; establishment and maintenance of
extension classes where necessary; and sports activities.
But Rolando Acosta, bureau
director at the Department of the Interior and Local Government,
said the “establishment and maintenance of extension classes”
may “correspond” to the hiring of local teachers. He hinted that
this only makes sense in areas where there is a shortage of
teachers, asking, “How can you operate a school without
teachers?”
Quijano of the Bureau of
Elementary Education, for her part, said, “We know that the local
government units are really using their SEF [Special Education Fund]
for education. What we just want to do is focus on the needs. If
they lack teachers, [the] money must be really spent on hiring
locally paid teachers.”
Indeed, for all of Las Piñas’s
school troubles, Victoriano of the Education department and Madrid
are positive the city could still achieve universal primary
education by 2015.
Dean Talisayon also said that
reaching the goal in seven years is possible for Las Piñas. But she
added that it is also crucial to keep an eye on the quality of
education in the city.
Talisayon said elementary
education is important because this is where “skills, attitude,
basic concepts, values” are developed. “Knowledge is
cumulative,” she said. “If the foundation is very weak, then it
would be difficult to catch up.”
“It’s a form of social
injustice,” Talisayon said, “if students don’t get the
education they deserve.”
To be continued
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