Philippines is once known for its quality of education among its neighbors in South East Asia. It was the American Colonization period when the Filipinos were taught of the importance of education. But through the past years, our country’s good reputation for its globally competitive education system vanished.
The latest report of National
Statistical Coordination shows that one in every six school age children is
deprived of education. When you count it over our million population,
uneducated Filipinos are still in great number.
Probably, the only good news
is our literacy rate. According to UNICEF, 93.4 percent of adults and 94.4
percent of youth can read and write. A vast number compared not only to our
neighbors in Asia but throughout the world.
Education has a dramatic
effect in our Economic development and growth. In fact, according to
researches, it is one of the primary causes of the unending poverty in the
Philippines.
Education for every Filipinos
is a must. I mean ‘quality’ education. Philippines is a growing nation, and an
educated society is the foundation of progress. It is the responsibility of
every Filipino, not only the government, to take part in supplying this primary
need for every children, the right to learn.
In 2005 enrollment rate in
primary education was 90 percent. Last year, it dropped into 83 percent, and it
continually diminishes. It’s a lot worse for our secondary education, where
enrollment rate is only 59 percent steadily over the same period.
The government spends 15.2 percent of its funds to education. But why are still shortage in classrooms, chairs, books and teachers? I firmly believed that funds for education is enough but it’s not properly used.
Sadly, lack of quality of
education has been going on for decades. Due to the negligence of the past
administrations, the problem has grew larger and harder to solve.
The country has an emerging population which is a great source of labor force. As a matter of fact, 27 out of 100 Filipinos finished tertiary education, higher than Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand. The sad thing is that our college graduates ended up working as domestic helpers or as caregivers, jobs that are decent but does not really need college education. It’s because of the ‘so called’ low quality of education here in our country, which are believed by the foreign people. This degrading treatment, caused the Filipino workers to have lower jobs abroad.
