Quality of Education in Philippine Public Schools

Last Tuesday, June 15, 2010, public schools and most private schools in the Philippines resumed classes. As shown on their official website, the National Statistics Office of the Philippines shows that their projected population for this year will be at 94.01 million Filipinos. And as most of you know, there are many poor Filipino families that can't afford to bring their children to high and middle class schools. And as expected, a lot of students enrolled in the different public schools around the country and most of them are congested.

There is a huge shortage of classrooms and in some of the schools shown on Channel 7's 24 Oras last night, children have to sit on the floor in order for them to fit and to be accommodated. And of course, there's also lack of teachers in public schools. The problem with this is that if the teacher has a lot of students, it will be too daunting of a task for him/her to manage each student's progress, scores and data, and overall educational and behavioral development.

Their attention would be further divided and may affect the student's performance in the future. Also, due to the fact that there's a huge problem with space, these schools may or will implement shifting among their students. This would mean that a group of students will come in the morning. The next batch may be during lunch and next would be early afternoon.

Most likely, the problem here is that since their studying hours will be cut down to around 4 hours or so per day, they will miss on a lot of stuff and there might not be sufficient time for them to learn what they need to learn in their specific academic levels. For example, a grade 3 student may not have enough time to learn all the essential lessons that he/she may need to learn as foundations for the lessons in grade 4.

Everyone has the right to education and being poor should not be a deterrent to this advocacy. This will be a challenging task for the incoming administration since, based on the trending, the population of the Philippines may continue to soar especially in the capital.

Thus, in my opinion, more funding, no corruption and effective planning of the Department of Education may help. More buildings and rooms for the comfort of the students, more hours for the quality of education, more teachers to effectively manage student development, more funding for supplies, better wages for public school teachers, and of course, the support of everyone regardless of social and political status.

Sources:
GMA Channel 7 24 Oras, June 16, 2010 broadcast

2000 Census-based Population Projections Table
http://www.census.gov.ph/data/sectordata/popproj_tab1r.html