A press statement by Kabataan Party-list Representative Raymond “Mong” Palatino

[photo credit: Glaiza May Muzones / bulatlat.com]

As classes open today, many school-age children and youth will not be in schools.

I am alarmed over the sharp decline in the preliminary enrolment figures for the current school year. This highlights the huge disparity between the increasing cost of education in the country and the financial capacity of Filipino families to send their children to school.

A study of the Department of Education shows that 96.77 percent of elementary school-age children go to school while 66.06 percent of high school-age teenagers go to secondary school.

But the same report reveals that for every 100 students who enroll in the 1st grade, 33 drop out before reaching Grade 5 and 31 out of 100 high school freshmen drop out before reaching their senior year. The trend for the past ten years show that for every 10 pupils who enroll in grade school, only 7 graduate.

In school year 2005-2006, almost 65 percent of six-year old children did not begin their primary education on time. The cohort survival rate was placed at 76 percent in 2001 but it went down to 70 percent in 2006. The completion rate was 75 percent in 2001 but it also went down to 68 percent in the same period. The drop-out rate and repetition rate also deteriorated in the same report.

Students drop out because of poverty. While basic education is free, many poor families are unable to finance the auxiliary school needs of their children, which, according to our computation would cost around P15,000 to P20,000 per student.

The 2006 Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FEIS) reveal how Filipinos now allocate less for their household education spending. Average spending on school fees, books and supplies fell to 1.3 percent from 2.9 percent between 2003 and 2006. Before the turn of the millennium, the share of educational expenses had been gradually increasing.

Unfortunately, most Filipino families now have to make a choice between sending their children to school and spending their meager income on food in order to survive. Poverty and government neglect have made education a luxury to many of our countrymen. The lower household spending on schooling, aggravated by price hikes in basic commodities, school fee increases, stagnant wage levels and mass lay-offs, further inflate the number of school dropouts and out of school youth this year.

On the other hand, many of those who managed to reach college are also doomed to drop out because of the high cost of private tertiary education and limited slots in poorly-funded state schools.

A study of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)-National Commission in the Philippines shows that the cohort survival rate from first to fourth year college was only 22 percent. College dropout rate, on the other hand, was pegged at 73 percent.

Under the Arroyo administration, the national average tuition rate has increased by as much as 89.39 percent, from P230.79 in school year 2001-2002 to P437.10 last school year. The National Capital Region average rate, on the other hand, went up by a whopping 94.54 percent, from P439.59 to P855.20 in the same period.

This year, private schools have increased tuition and miscellaneous fees, contrary to CHED’s claims.

There’s nothing else to blame but the Education Act of 1982 for the staggering tuition hikes in the last two decades. By giving school owners a free hand in determining tuition rate, the Education Act effectively bestowed private schools limitless powers.

The deregulated environment set by the Act ensures the wholesale commodification of a fast-expanding private tertiary education. It is interesting to note, for instance, how our biggest private tertiary education institutions figure in the top 1000 corporations in the country. For the past six years, these institutions have raked in P15.43 billion ($337,932,554) in gross revenues and P3.45 billion ($75,558,475) in net income. And yet administrations and owners of these schools never fail to hike their tuition fees annually.

There is another trend in fee increases in private schools. School owners and administrators are raking in bigger profits without actually raising tuition.

Schools are foregoing tuition increases but they have been bloating miscellaneous fees which are mostly questionable. Unlike tuition, miscellaneous fee hikes have remained unchecked for the last few years. This explains why school owners are able to avoid tuition hikes but still manage to rake in bigger profits annually.

Such tactic has proven to be very profitable to school owners. Unlike tuition, miscellaneous fee of all sorts are not included in the tuition increase consultations provided under CHED Memorandum No. 13, the guidelines for tuition hike applications, which was recently re-implemented following the lifting of the tuition cap.

Some of the dubious fees being collected in private schools are energy fee, development fee, accreditation fee, athletics fee, internet fee, insurance fee and air-condition fee. These fees are not only questionable, they are superfluous. School owners are becoming more creative in inventing new fees to justify their lust for profit.

State schools are plagued by similar problems. Not only are they few now and their enrolment quotas limited, they are also haunted by increases in tuition and other fees thus forcing many state scholars to leave.

In 2007, the 300 percent tuition hike in the University of the Philippines led to a significant decline in the freshman enrollment in several course offerings. The Office of the Student Regent pegged the no-show rate or the number of UPCAT passers who did not enroll at 20 to 40 percent.

The current crisis in public tertiary education should be blamed on government’s policy of commercialization. The policy allows state schools to be treated no longer as national agencies performing socially-oriented activities and hence entitled to government subsidy, but as income-earning entities. This further translates into incentives for money-making tertiary schools, thereby fully encouraging the commercialization of education.

Education is an avowed priority of the State but under the present administration, like its predecessors, it does not draw an ounce of sympathy from the authorities.

The government has been formulating several education policies and programs with the aim of improving the quality of education in the country but it is missing the most important and decisive factor to meet this goal – spending more on education. Unfortunately, government spending on education has been the complete opposite in the past years.

The Philippine government spent a measly 2.5 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product on public educational institutions in 2007. This pales in comparison to its neighboring countries Malaysia with 6.2 percent and Thailand with 4.2 percent. Laos even spent more at 3.0 percent. The minimum prescribed standard for education spending set by UNESCO is 6 percent of a country’s GDP.

Education is the foundation upon which we will build our country. It serves as the means to bring about the desired change in society, to develop a generation of virtuous individuals and thus contribute to the development of good human beings. How much we invest on the education of the youth today will determine the kind of nation we will become in the future.

Unless the government reverses its present education policies and its thrust to hand over tertiary education to the private sector and until it flexes its muscles to stop the unabated hikes in tuition and other fees, it will certainly bury the confidence, hopes and great faith of the Filipino youth and the nation for a brighter future ahead.