ISSUES RESOLUTION
Quality of Education
The students' performance in both the 2014 NAT and NCAE
were excessively below the target mean score. Having said this,
the poor quality of the Philippine educational system is
manifested in the comparison of completion rates between
highly urbanized city of Metro Manila, which is also happens to
be not only the country's capital but the largest metropolitan
area in the Philippines and other places in the country such as
Mindanao and Eastern Visayas. Although Manila is able to boast
a primary school completion rate of approximately 100 percent,
other areas of the nation, such as Eastern Visayas and
Mindanao, hold primary school completion rate of only 30
percent or even less. This kind of statistic is no surprise to the
education system in the Philippine context, students who hail
from Philippine urban areas have the financial capacity to
complete at the very least their primary school education.
Budget for Education
The second issue that the Philippine educational system faces
is the budget for education. Although it has been mandated by
the Philippine Constitution for the government to allocate the
highest proportion of its government to education, the
Philippines remains to have one of the lowest budget allocations
to education among ASEAN countries.
Sports, clubs, social advocacy groups and other
activities can all be good things and have positive
impacts on students and the community. But a
critical mass of some of the country’s most
talented and diligent students systematically sell
themselves short, turning away from their
academic work in favor of all and sundry
extracurricular activities. Many are intensely
stressed and consumed by those pursuits, such
that they appear to have substantially less time for
rest and leisure than their counterparts did two
decades ago, even as they spend much less time in
the library or laboratory.
As most school funding comes from public
budgets, developing effective mechanisms to
allocate this funding among competing priorities is
an important policy concern for governments.
School systems have limited resources with which
to pursue their objectives and using these
resources efficiently is a key aim for their
activities.
Investing in teacher quality Attracting and
retaining an adequate teaching workforce is a
policy imperative. Teachers are the most
important resource in schools and the quality and
effectiveness of their teaching is essential for
student learning (Rockoff, 2004; OECD, 2005).
Investing insufficiently in the teaching workforce
might generate ineffectiveness through the
crowding out of the best and most qualified
human resources. Spending reforms driven by
reductions in teachers’ salaries, initial education
and professional training may entail a loss of
attractiveness of the profession and create
challenges to quality, equity and efficiency in the
long run. Teachers’ compensation levels play a
role in determining who comes to the profession,
who remains and for how long (OECD, 2005;
Dolton and Marcenaro-Gutierrez, 2011). But not
only the compensation levels are important, but
working conditions in general, including

Affordability of Education
The third prevalent issue the Philippine educational system
continuously encounters is the affordability of education (or lack
thereof). A big disparity in educational achievements is evident
across various social groups. Socioeconomically disadvantaged
students otherwise known as students who are members of high
and low-income poverty-stricken families, have immensely
higher drop-out rates in the elementary level. Additionally, most
freshmen students at the tertiary level come from relatively
well-off families.
recruitment, management, professional
autonomy, collaboration and support. The OECD
(2016d) report prepared for the 2016
International Summit on the Teaching Profession
highlights the importance of effective and
continuous teacher professional development and
the policies underpinning it. Given the importance
of teaching workforce policies for high quality
schooling, a dedicated comparative thematic
report will be prepared as part of the School
Resources Review to analyse country policies for
managing human resources in school education
(OECD, forthcoming)
Going to college just became easier for many
Filipinos.
On the night of Aug. 3 local time, Philippine
president Duterte signed into law a bill granting
tuition-free education at over 100 state
universities and colleges.
Congress passed the Universal Access to Quality
Tertiary Education Act earlier this year and sent it
to Duterte last month to sign or veto. Duterte’s
economic advisors had suggested he veto the bill,
arguing it would be too expensive and estimating
costs could reach $2 billion a year.

Drop-out Rate (Out-of-school youth)

France Castro, secretary of Alliance of Concerned Teachers
(ACT), stated that there is a graved need to address the alarming
number of out-of-school youth in the country. The Philippines
overall has 1.4 million children who are out-of-school, according
to UNESCO's data, and is additionally the only ASEAN country
that is included in the top 5 countries with the highest number
of out-of-school youth. In 2012, the Department of Education
showed data of a 6.38% drop-out rate in primary school and a
7.82% drop-out rate in secondary school. Castro further stated
that "the increasing number of out-of-school children is being
caused by poverty. The price increases in prices of oil, electricity,
rice, water, and other basic commodities are further pushing the
poor into dire poverty." Subsequently, as more families become
poorer, the number of students enrolled in public schools
increases, especially in the high school level. In 2013, the
Department of Education estimated that there are 38, 503
elementary schools alongside 7,470 high schools.

Mismatch
There is a large mismatch between educational training and
actual jobs. This stands to be a major issue at the tertiary level
and it is furthermore the cause of the continuation of a
substantial amount of
educated yet unemployed or underemployed people. According
to Dean Salvador Belaro Jr., the Cornell-educated Congressman
representing 1-Ang Edukasyon Party-list in the House of
Representatives, the number of educated unemployed reaches
around 600,000 per year. He refers to said condition as the
"education gap".

Brain Drain
Brain Drain is a persistent problem evident in the educational
system of the Philippines due to the modern phenomenon of
globalization, with the number of Overseas Filipino Workers
(OFWs) who worked abroad at any time during the period April
to September 2014 was estimated at 2.3 million. This ongoing
mass emigration subsequently inducts an unparalleled brain
drain alongside grave economic implications. Additionally,
Philippine society hitherto is footing the bill for the education of
millions who successively spend their more productive years
abroad. Thus, the already poor educational system of the
Philippines indirectly subsidizes the opulent economies who host
the OFWs.
Lack of Facilities and Teacher Shortage in Public Schools
There are large-scale shortages of facilities across Philippine
public schools - these include classrooms, teachers, desks and
chairs, textbooks, and audio-video materials. According to 2003
Department of Education
Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz, reportedly over 17 million
students are enrolled in Philippine public schools, and at an
annual population growth rate of 2.3 per cent, about 1.7 million
babies are born every year which means that in a few years
time, more individuals will assert ownership over their share of
the (limited) educational provisions. To sum it up, there are too
many students and too little resources. Albeit the claims the
government makes on increasing the allocated budget for
education, there is a prevalent difficulty the public school system
faces with regard to shortages. Furthermore, state universities
and colleges gradually raise tuition so as to have a means of
purchasing facilities, thus making tertiary education difficult to
access or more often than not, inaccessible to the poor.
However, it is worth taking note of what the Aquino
administration has done in its five years of governance with
regard to classroom-building - the number of classrooms built
from 2005 to the first half of the year 2010 has tripled.
Additionally, the number of classrooms that were put up from
the year 2010 to February 2015 was recorded to be at 86,478,
significantly exceeding the 17,305 classrooms that were built
from 2005 to 2010 and adequate enough to counterbalance the
66,800 classroom deficit in the year 2010.
In President Aquino's fourth state of the nation address (SONA),
he spoke of the government's achievement of zero backlog in
facilities such as classrooms, desks and chairs, and textbooks
which has addressed the gap in the shortages of teachers, what
with 56,085 new teachers for the 61, 510 teaching items in the
year 2013. However, the data gathered by the Department of
Education shows that during the opening of classes (June 2013),
the shortages in classrooms was pegged at 19, 579, 60 million
shortages when it came to textbooks, 2.5 million shortages with
regard to chairs, and 80, 937 shortages of water and sanitation
facilities. Furthermore, 770 schools in Metro Manila, Cebu, and
Davao were considered overcrowded. The Department of
Education also released data stating that 91% of the 61, 510
shortages in teachers was filled up alongside appointments (5,
425 to be specific) are being processed