Abad seeks to decentralize DepEd.

(From Philippine Daily Inquirer)

Byline: Belinda Olivares-Cunanan

LAST Sunday on the radio program that Cecile Alvarez and I co-host, Education Secretary Florencio Abad gave us a picture of Philippine education in crisis. He said that the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study of 38 countries, which was released last December, saw RP placing 36th from the bottom. The Top 5 countries were from our region: Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Japan (tied with United Kingdom). Another survey on high school proficiency in 45 countries put RP 41st from the bottom, besting only South Africa, Ghana, Botswana and Saudi Arabia. On elementary proficiency among 25 countries, RP was 23rd, beating only Tunisia and Morocco. On the other hand, only 0.64 percent of our elementary graduates scored 75 percent or better out of about 1.2 million examinees in the 2004 High School Readiness Test. They showed that our average elementary graduate's competency is equal only to Grade 4.

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We queried Abad on whether he would implement the bridge program proposed by his predecessor, Dr. Edilberto de Jesus, to help elementary graduates tackle high school. He said that 22 percent of high school students chose to take the optional remedial classes, and that the results of these will be evaluated. Should the students show no improvement, he would recommend to the President to enforce the bridge program. Abad said the problem is that there are parents who don't want a five-year high school as they want to get their children employed as soon as possible. This is, of course, tragic, because these parents are only postponing the agony for their children, who are ill-prepared for the future. Moreover, he said, more than any other age, ours has come to value knowledge so much, and yet our students learn so little.

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Neither are our 51,000 teachers well-prepared. In a self-assessment test for English, only 19 percent scored 75 percent or better. The deterioration in English of students is illustrated by the fact that in qualifying exams for call-center employment, only three out of 100 applicants manage to pass. The drop-out statistics also rise as the students go into higher levels of education. There's a shortage of about 57,000 classrooms. RP also spends among the lowest for education, P7,700 per students, compared to our Asian neighbors and especially with the advanced countries.