Issues Regarding the Educational System

When it comes to influence, the educational system of the Philippines has been affected immensely by the
country's colonial history including the Spanish period, American period, and Japanese rule and occupation.
Although having been significantly influenced by all its colonizers with regard to the educational system, the
most influential and deep-rooted contributions arose during the American occupation (1898); it was during
this aforementioned period that 1. English was introduced as the primary language of instruction and 2. A
public education system was first established - a system specifically patterned after the United States school
system and further administered by the newly established Department of Instruction. Similar to the United
States of America, the Philippines has had an extensive and extremely inclusive system of education
including features such as higher education.

The present Philippine Educational system firstly covers six years of compulsory education (from grades 1 to
6), divided informally into two levels - both composed of three years. The first level is known as the Primary
Level and the second level is known as the Intermediate Level.

However, although the Philippine educational system has extensively been a model for other Southeast
Asian countries, in recent years such a matter has no longer stood true, and such a system has been
deteriorated - such a fact is especially evident and true in the country's more secluded poverty-stricken
regions.
Nationwide the Philippines faces several issues when it comes to the educational system.

Quality of Education
First of which, is the quality of education. In the year 2014, the National Achievement Test (NAT) and the
National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) results show that there had been a decline in the quality of
Philippine education at the elementary and secondary levels. 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.

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.

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.

Social Divide
There exists a problematic and distinct social cleavage with regard to educational opportunities in the
country. Most modern societies have encountered an equalizing effect on the subject of education. This
aforementioned divide in the social system has made education become part of the institutional mechanism
that creates a division between the poor and the rich.

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

Issues regarding the K-12

There is dispute with regard to the quality of education provided by the system. In the year 2014, the
National Achievement Test (NAT) and the National Career Assessment Examination (NCAE) results show that
there had been a decline in the quality of Philippine education at the elementary and secondary levels. 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.
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. 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. Lastly, there is a large proportion of mismatch, wherein there exists a massive
proportion of mismatch between 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.

7 Key Issues And Problems Of Philippine

Education
Across the years our educational system has been rocked by controversies which have remained
unabated up to this day. Amidst the welter of issues, two of them have managed to stand out in
importance: quality and relevance. The major difficulty in education in the Philippines is the
short-sighted policy of sacrificing the quality and quantity of education for reasons of economy.

The key issues and problems in Philippine education which need further debate and depth
analysis as well as immediate resolution include the following:

1. Deteriorating quality of education

It is uncommon to hear college teachers decry the quality of students that come to them. They
lament the students’ inability to construct a correct sentence, much less a paragraph. Private
schools have been assailed as profit-making institutions turning out half-baked graduates who
later become part of the nation’s educated unemployed. All these are indications of the poor
quality of education.

There are multiple factors which have led to low educational standards. Studies and fact-finding
commissions have shown that the deteriorating quality of education is due to the low government
budget for education; poor quality of teachers; poor management of schools; poor school
facilities such as laboratory and library facilities; poor learning environment; the content of the
curriculum; inadequate books and science equipment; the poor method of instruction; shortages
of classrooms; and others.

2. Colonial, feudal, imperial, commercial, and elitist orientation in Philippine education

A rather sweeping indictment is that the Philippine educational system has been and still is
basically American in orientation and objectives. Even now, despite years of independence, our
educational system has not succeeded in eliminating the chronic colonial mentality which
abounds like a mental blight within or without the academe. At present, quality education is
financial-capacity based, making higher education more of a privilege rather than a right.

3. Shortage of school buildings, textbooks and equipment

Since 1960, elementary enrolment has been expanding at the rapid rate of 4% a year owing to
increase in the number of children and in the enrolment ratio.

The shortages of classrooms and textbooks are particularly severe. The nationwide classroom
shortage is estimated to be 40,000 and the DECS (now DepEd) operates two shifts in many
schools. The textbook problem is even more serious. A survey done in preparation for a World
Bank education loan found that the pupil-textbook ration in the public elementary schools is 10:1
and 79% of the textbooks are more than 5 years old. This situation has persisted for many years.

Other teaching tools, such as science materials, teaching devices and audio-visual aids, are also
in short supply. Perennial graft and corruption in the acquisition of books and in the construction
of school buildings has often been reported. This situation handicaps the teaching staff in their
work.

4. Overworked and underpaid teaching staff

Teaching has often been referred to as the “most notable of all professions.” To many teachers,
however, the noble image of their profession has been transformed into an illusion. Over the last
three decades, we have come to think of the Filipino teachers as overworked and underpaid
professionals.

The fact that teachers are paid subsistence wages is only half of their sad story. Their daily bout
with dilapidated classrooms, overcrowded classes, and lack of teaching materials, among others,
make the teachers hardly rewarded work even more difficult.

Aside from classroom instructions, teachers perform a host of backbreaking and time-consuming
jobs unrelated to the teaching function. The National Research and Development Center for
Teacher Education under the DECS listed 76 extracurricular activities performed by public
school teachers. Such activities include Operation Timbang, census taking, tax consciousness
drive, Clean and Green Drive, Alay-Tanim, Alay-Lakad, fund raising campaigns, lining the
streets to welcome foreign dignitaries, etc. To do all these, teachers are forced to work two or
three hours overtime everyday. They also have to report during weekends and holidays and even
during their yearly vacation time.

5. Bilingual policy and the problem of a national language

The bilingual policy in education aims to develop a Filipino who is proficient in both English
and Filipino. For the past 20 years, since the DECS adopted the bilingual policy, Tagalog-based
Pilipino has been used to teach over half of the subjects in the elementary and secondary
curriculum of both public and private schools. Mathematics and the natural sciences continue to
be taught in English. Despite the findings of the Ateneo Social Weather Survey that 92% of
Filipinos already speak and understand Tagalog, many provinces north and south of Metro
Manila still encounter problems with the language. This is unfortunate because Pilipino is used
in nationally conducted exams and tests. While the bilingual policy is a law which not even the
Secretary of Education can change, it has become a growing concern that many students are
deficient in communication skills.

6. Mismatch

The major problem of the tertiary level is the large proportion of the so called “mismatch”
between training and actual jobs, as well as the existence of a large group of educated
unemployed or underemployed. The literature points out that this could be the result of a rational
response to a dual labor market where one sector is import-substituting and highly-protected with
low wages. Graduates may choose to “wait it out” until a job opportunity in the high paying
sector comes.

To address this problem, it is suggested that leaders in business and industry should be actively
involved in higher education. Furthermore, a selective admission policy should be carried out;
that is, mechanisms should be installed to reduce enrolment in oversubscribed programs and
promote enrolment in undersubscribed ones.

7. Globalization issue in education

It is in the educational sector where the concept of globalization is further refined and
disseminated. It comes in varied forms as “global competitiveness,” “the information highway,”
“the Third Wave Theory,” “post modern society,” “the end of history,” and “borderless
economy.”

The so-called Philippines 2000 was launched by the Philippine government to promote “global
competitiveness,” Philippine Education 2000 carried it to effect through training of more skilled
workers and surplus Filipino human power for foreign corporations to reduce their cost of
production.

The Philippines, including its educational sector, is controlled by US monopoly capital through
loan politics. This task is accomplished by the IMF, the World Bank and a consortium of
transnational banks, called the Paris Club, supervised by the WB. The structural adjustments as
basis for the grants of loans, basically require liberalization, deregulation and privatization in a
recipient country.

As transplanted into the educational sector, deregulation is spelled reduced appropriation or

reduced financial assistance to public schools through so called fiscal autonomies; privatization
and liberalization is spelled commercialized education or liberalization of governments’
supervision of private schools and privatize state colleges and universities.

The WB-IMF and the Ford Foundation have earmarked $400M for Philippine education. These
loans financed the Educational Development Project (EDPITAF) in 1972; the Presidential
Commission to Survey Philippine Education (PCSPE) in 1969; the Program for Decentralized
Educational Development (PRODED) in 1981-1989. As pointed out by many critics, “the
massive penetration of WB-IMF loans into the Philippine Educational System has opened it wide
to official and systematic foreign control, the perpetuation of US and other foreign economic
interest, and to maximize the efficiency of exploiting Philippine natural resources and skilled
labor.”

A number of studies and fact-finding commissions such as the Sibayan and Gonzales Evaluation
(1988), the Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine Education (PCSPE, 1969), and the
Congressional Commission on Education (EDCOM, 1991-1992) have pointed out that the
problems of Philippine education are the problems of quality and political will.