On the first day of the new school year, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers called on government to take steps to ensure universal completion of basic education for all school-age children.

“Malacañang and DepEd officials will undoubtedly be patting themselves on the back for another ‘trouble-free’ opening of the new school year.” said ACT chairperson Antonio Tinio. “However, the public knows that our educational system continues to be plagued by serious problems.”

Tinio said that one way to measure government’s performance in education is by how well it fulfills its obligation to provide basic education to the school-age population. “By this yardstick, the Arroyo government has failed miserably.”

Tinio explained that in 1991, the participation rate (percentage of children enrolled at the prescribed level of education for their age) in elementary schools was 84.6%. In 1998, it rose to 95.1%. But in 2007, it fell back to 83.2%. At the secondary level, the participation rate was 54.7% in 1991, rose to 64.0% in 1998, but fell to 58.59% in 2007.

He added that completion rates for both elementary and secondary schools have not improved significantly since 1991, with only around two-thirds of students completing their schooling within the prescribed number of years.

“The gains that were made in the 1990s in terms of expanding access to basic education have been wiped out in the Arroyo years,” said Tinio. “Will this administration come up with a comprehensive program that will move us closer to universal coverage of basic education for our children? Or is it content to play patronage politics by giving dole-outs and interest-free student loans?”

Classroom, teacher shortages

ACT also contested the claim made by Department of Education Secretary Jesli Lapus that teacher and classroom shortages have now been adequately addressed by the government.

“We estimate that the Deped needs to construct an additional 41,905 classrooms this school year in order to attain a 1:45 classroom to student ratio without resorting to two shifts.” Tinio noted that at the elementary level, classroom shortages are concentrated in the National Capital Region and Calabarzon. At the secondary level, there are classroom shortages nationwide, but are most acutely felt in NCR, Calabarzon, Central Luzon, and Central and Western Visayas , he added.

With regard to teacher shortages, Tinio argued that the DepEd’s reliance on teacher-pupil ratios in their analysis of teacher deployments has tended to cover up the full extent of the shortages. “Teacher-pupil ratios don’t take factors such as class size, teacher specialization from Grade 4 onwards, and teaching load into consideration. This leads to an absurd situation where the DepEd claims that there is now a surplus of teachers just because the teacher-pupil ratio stands at 1:35 for elementary and 1:39 for high schools.”

“However, the large class sizes in many regions throughout the country belie this claim.” Tinio noted that at the elementary level, large classes sizes were to be found mainly in NCR and ARMM, while at the secondary level, they were worst in NCR, Calabarzon, and ARMM. “To reduce class sizes to 40 students per class at the elementary level and 45 students per class at the secondary level, DepEd needs to hire 25,240 additional teachers this school year.”

ACT called on government to raise public spending on education to 6% of GNP and make use of the funds to eliminate shortages, improve participation and completion rates in basic education, raise the salaries of teachers, and improve the quality of education in public schools. Government currently spends less than 3% of GNP on education. #