Last March 23, 2011, Wednesday, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Higher and Technical Education tackled Kabataan Party-List’s House Bill 807 or the “Anti ‘No Permit No Exam Policy’ Bill.” It is a bill that would prohibit the implementation of the unjust “No Permit No Exam” policy being imposed in many schools, colleges and universities nationwide.

I’ve always believed that such a policy is unjust because it essentially forces the threat of academic delinquency on a student because of the financial capacity of his family. There are other means schools can explore in order to ensure payments of tuition and other fees without imposing prejudice on the academic standing of a student.

(Imagine a scenario where an honor student is dropped from the honor roll simply because his parent’s remittance was delayed due to a natural calamity in the country where the parent works, or a war breaks out there.) We actually received dozens of emails and calls a day last month because of the complaints about the “no permit, no exam” policy.

Majority of the congressmen in attendance favorably affirmed the bill in principle and agreed to have the bill consolidated into a final version with the other bills with a similar purpose. The consolidated version is to be approved on the next hearing. Only the congressman from A Teacher Party-List (which is a misnomer because they obviously represent the private interests of school owners and businessmen) rejected the bill and tried to water it down with so many nonsense insertions. As of the moment there are around thirty (30) congressmen who have signed House Bill 807 as co-authors.

On another note, we were able to successfully get the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to speak about the issue, and in a joint press conference, CHED reiterated their Memo (CMO No. 02-2010) instructing schools through an appeal not to implement the “no permit no exam” policy. It also brought to everyone’s attention Sec. 99 of the Manual for Regulation of Higher Education Institutions which states that “no higher education institution shall deny final examinations to a student who has outstanding financial or property obligations, including unpaid tuition and other school fees corresponding to the school term.”