Big Rallies vs School Budget Cuts Set

Thousands of students, educators and non-academic personnel are gearing for big rallies all over the country next week to protest huge slashes in the education budget which organizers said would result in the mass disenfranchisement of enrollees, among others. Organizers accused administration officials of hyping on the terror scare in order to justify monumental budget increases for defense at the expense of education, health and social service.

By Gerry Albert-Corpuz
Bulatlat.com

Thousands of students, teachers, health personnel and other stakeholders of education will join a nationwide protest action on Nov. 26 to oppose the government plan to cut education budget by a mile in favor of defense and military appropriation and the state war against local and international terrorism.

The Save SCU (state colleges and universities) Coalition, a broad alliance of student groups, teacher associations, government workers and academic personnel will lead the national fight against the budget cut and for higher budget for education. This was revealed by Raymond Palatino, chair of the militant student group National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) and one of the leaders of the broad coalition.

"On Nov. 26, we will lodge our strongest protest and condemnation of President Arroyo's perverse priorities like bigger budget for defense and intelligence expenditures over youth and people's rights and welfare", Palatino said.

The NUSP president said throwing away the country's limited revenues to foreign credit agencies and military needs will lead to bigger slash in the capital outlay, maintenance and operating expenditures of state colleges and universities.

"It would further lead to poorer state of facilities and lower quality education in the public sector", he said. "The cut may even force our public universities to raise tuition or commercialize assets to augment their decreased resources.”

The proposed budget now pending in Congress seeks to cut off P143.9 million in the allocation of state universities and colleges, P502.2 million in health expenditure and a big P307.5 million for housing and community development.

In a statement, the NUSP said that government is hyping on the terror scare in order to bloat the defense, military and police budget at the expense of education, health and social service allocations. Palatino said the military's obsession to big budget is being satisfied through huge budget cuts in these sectors.

High school students too

Students in secondary schools will also join the national day of action against wrong budgetary priorities of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration,  NUSP's coordinator for high school Theresa Nacabuan said.

In a separate press statement, Nacabuan said even public high schools will suffer significant budget cuts under the proposed 2003 national budget. The Philippine Science High School (PSHS) – the country’s premier science institution – alone will have its budged slashed by P18.79, she said. Similar budget cuts in the UP Integrated School (UPIS) and PUP Laboratory High School which may eventually lead to downsizing of school's population and phasing-out of schools like what happen to PUP laboratory high school in Lopez, Quezon last year, she added.

Affirming NUSP’s and the coalition’s allegations, the UP-based Congress for Teachers/Educators for Nationalism and Democracy (Contend), revealed the results of its in-depth study on the state of tertiary education in the country.

Sarah Raymundo, an official of Contend and sociology professor in UP-Diliman, said the dismal state of tertiary education in the Philippines can be seen from a startling fact that only one fourth of the high school age population of 16-21 years manage to enroll and of these only 42 percent reach college.

As of academic year 1999-2000, there are only 164 state universities and colleges throughout the country compared to 1,189 private higher education institutions, she also said. As a result, there are roughly 1.9 million students in private tertiary schools as opposed to 663,399 enrollees in public tertiary schools, she said.

Raymundo said the partnership between transnational corporation and Department of Education (DepEd) underscores the overall thrust of the Macapagal-Arroyo administration to produce graduates in the name of globalization that seeks to promote commercialization and corporatization of tertiary public school system.

" The Medium Term Higher Education Development and Investment Plan 2001-2004 seeks to gradually reduce the budget for state universities and colleges to increase private sector's participation in tertiary education," she said.

Misappropriation

"Instead of budget cuts, the government should increase capital outlay to education by at least P64 billion next year," Benjie Valbuena, president of the Manila Public School Teachers' Association (MPSTA), said.

According to Valbuena, the budget for education next year only represents 12 percent of the entire national budget for 2003 as compared to automatic appropriations for debt servicing which eats up 40 percent.

"The problem of classroom shortage increased threefold, while teachers shortage doubled under the present Arroyo administration," the MPSTA chair said. "To fill up the shortages projected by the DepEd next school year, the government should allocate an additional P 64 billion, nothing more, nothing less."

Black Monday

On the eve of the National Day of Action, students, teachers and other members of the UP academic community will launch a system wide protest against the P 13.9 million budget cut in the budget of UP-Diliman campus in Quezon City.

Thousands of students, professors and non-academic personnel will march to Mendiola to protest the budgetary slash which according to rally organizers would lead to full-blown commercialization of education in UP. "We will declare it a Black Monday in protest of the Arroyo government plan to cut the university budget by almost 14 million pesos," said a student representative. Bulatlat.com

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