The Alliance of Concerned Teachers today criticized Pres. Gloria Arroyo for her government’s allegedly “token” response to the problem of declining enrolment in basic education.

President Arroyo yesterday directed the Department of Education to drop school uniforms as a requirement in public elementary and high schools in order to “make it as small a burden as possible on parents to send their children to school.”

“While no longer requiring uniforms is a positive step, it’s not nearly enough considering the magnitude of the problem. In the last few years, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of out-of-school children,” said ACT chairperson Antonio Tinio. “Unfortunately, this has been going on largely unnoticed.”

Tinio noted that there has been a dramatic drop in elementary and high school enrolment since 2005. “Since the mid-1990s, enrolment would increase by around 2%, annually. That’s roughly 300,000 additional students per year, mostly due to population growth. However, from 2004 onwards enrolment has been stagnant. This means that more and more children are staying out of school.”

He accused the DepEd of covering up the problem by releasing bloated enrolment projections for the new school year. “DepEd press releases routinely claim that 21.66 million public and private school students will troop back to school this June. The actual figure, based on the DepEd’s own records, is closer to 19.5 million, where it’s been hovering since 2005.”

However, Tinio pointed out that the National Economic Development Authority has quietly acknowledged the worsening turn in basic education. Referring to key performance indicators for the sector, NEDA notes that “declining trends from 2002 to 2005 suggest an increased gap between performance and targets and low probability of achieving targets for 2010.”

According to ACT, the number of out-of-school children aged 6-15 years has grown by 78% since 2002. “There were 1.86 million out-of-school children in 2002. This grew to 3.33 million in 2007. That’s an additional 1.46 million children forced out of school in just 5 years,” said Tinio.

“Providing universal access to basic education is one of the government’s fundamental obligations. Since the 1987 Constitution mandated free basic education up to high school, no administration has presided over such a decline in enrolments as we’re seeing now. This is a huge blight on the Arroyo administration’ s track record in education,” said Tinio.

ACT cited worsening poverty as the main factor behind the growing number of out-of-school children. “This belies the government’s claims that economic growth is ‘trickling down’ to the poor. Students and parents most often cite lack of food or baon, transportation fare, and the burden of school fees as the main reasons why children stop going to school or fail to enroll altogether,” said Tinio.

Claiming that the situation required “immediate and drastic intervention,” ACT called on the government to adopt the following measures to encourage more poor families to enroll and keep their children in school:

1) Implement a genuine school feeding program. ACT noted that DepEd’s current program, which provides poor students with a weekly allotment of rice, has been poorly implemented. In many cases, the rice subsidy fails to reach the target recipients.

2) Establish a free public school bus or jeepney service in all schools.

3) Abolish all school fees. ACT explained that the current DepEd policy regarding school fees is deceptive, since it prohibits the charging of miscellaneous fees only during the enrolment period, but allows it during the rest of the school year. Genuine prohibition of fees requires that the DepEd provide adequate funding for the maintenance and operation expenses of schools. #