No guarantee for quality education?

FROM A DISTANCE

Hilarion “Abe” Pawid

Will the present generation of school children secure the solid foundation for a quality education? Come to think of it.

The opening of classes this month revives annual worries and concerns. Shortages of teachers, decent classrooms and other school facilities is perennial among apprehensive and helpless parents who dream of better lives for their children through proper education.

 The trepidation is actually the constitutional obligation of government to provide. Yet despite politicians’ penchant to talk and talk, they would prefer not to walk their talk. As a result the quality of education in the country is now lagging behind even among the lower-ranked third-world countries. Educational systems and policies do not move hand-in-hand in the right direction.

Let’s take the case of the new Basic Education Program Law, enacted as R.A. 10533. This new law requires kids to undergo kindergarten classes before they can enter grade I.

Before the passage of this law, a number of Local Government Units in coordination with the Dept. of Social and Welfare Development opened what is popularly known as Day Care Centers.  Compensation for teachers, although meager and in the pauper’s category, were provided. In most cases, classes were held in any available space including private homes in the community.

In urban areas where parents are better off income wise pay reasonable cost for pre-school classes with qualified teachers and better facilities.

 The new thrust under President Aquino is dubbed as the “K to 12” policy. This is nothing new in the countryside with existing Day Care Centers. It simply recognizes what was initiated by LGUs and the DSWD without providing the basic wherewithal and apparatus such as standard salaries for qualified teachers and decent facilities.

Although the new law is meant to upgrade the level of education and underwrite national competitiveness, the country is short of 46,567 teacher items and 32,844 classrooms. Existing are 89,807 teacher items which are deemed contractual and exploited with stumpy pay disproportionate with their duties and responsibilities.

There are 35,449 volunteer kindergarten teachers backed-up by 4,828 mobile teacher-coordinators.  LGUs have in their respective payrolls 49,530 teachers who are not protected with job security.

 The present dispensation through the Dept. of Education is optimistic in solving the woos of parents with the announced construction of 34,131 classrooms for this year, 1,287 more units than is needed. But while these classrooms are being constructed, pupils must make do as they had in the past with makeshift accommodations.  The cycle is repeated year after year.

In the City of Baguio, COA analysis reveals that more than 50 percent of its P61 million Special Educational Fund was spent mainly for the salaries of personnel. Classrooms, school desks and other basic infrastructure facilities were not prioritized as recommended by the Commission on Audit.

Come next school year, new faces will troop the enrolment line which will again require more classrooms. As the population balloons every year, classroom and teacher shortages become a vicious cycle that visits the school program annually. 

Nonetheless, the DepEd has also made known the hiring of 61,510 new teachers with 14,953 more than the 46,567 teacher items needed for this school year.   With anticipation, this news is so good to be true. Sanguinely newly elected officials will not fill those items with their ill-prepared political protégées.

Parents have learned to surrender the faith of their dreams in our educational program. Lack of classrooms, inadequate facilities such as books and reference materials, ill-prepared teachers, perilous environment and other short-comings of the government has become a common place.

K to 12 is not a guarantee to prepare a child for quality education and success. The guarantee is in the determination of parents to push their children for better life through education, even if this means disposing of valuable property to attain it.