This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 11, April 24-30, 2005
SPECIAL REPORT
Education: A Low State Priority The employment crisis, low
salary and unrealistic professional regulation policies continue to plague the
education profession. Education is an avowed priority of the state but under the
present administration – like its predecessors – it does not draw an ounce of
sympathy from the authorities. The perennial delay in
salary, especially for newly-hired teachers, are forcing teachers to borrow from
lending institutions. This was facilitated by a payroll system that
institutionalized the automatic deduction of loan payments computed by some 187
lending institutions - data which the DepEd had no control over. Furthermore,
the system allowed the deduction from the teacher's loan payments of a service
fee paid to DepEd personnel. Poor performance Lack of teaching items and
low salary are not the only reasons, however, for the shortage of teachers.
Apparently, many Education graduates don't pass the LET and end up being idle or
underemployed The performance scores in
the General Education component of the LET reflect the abilities of the teacher
examinees. In the 1996 LET, the highest score was 72 percent. However, scores as
low as 4, 1 and zero percents were registered by some examinees. Similar
observations were made in studies of the PBET tests where examinees scored zero,
indicating that they did not answer any item correctly.
Declining quality Palatino fears that the
problem in the shortage of teachers and poor performance in LET may lead to a
further slide in educational standards. © 2004 Bulatlat
■
Alipato Publications Permission is granted to reprint or redistribute this article, provided its author/s and Bulatlat are properly credited and notified.
(Last of 3 parts)
Education is an avowed priority of the state but under the present
administration – like its predecessors – it does not draw an ounce of sympathy
from the authorities.
By
Carl Marc Ramota
Bulatlat
In an interview with Bulatlat, Raymond Palatino, Anak ng Bayan (Sons of the
Daughters of the Nation) Youth Party vice
president summed up the main problem: "The future of our teachers remains dim
under the Arroyo administration."
In a recent statement, the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) revealed that
the Arroyo government's 2005 budget, signed into law March 15, has no provisions
for salary increases of state workers.
Since 2001, the salaries of government employees, which include teachers, have
been frozen. The last salary increases were given in 2000, a 10 percent increase
(P440) and five percent in 2001 (P242).
ACT estimates that a Teacher I receives only P9,939 gross monthly salary.
Compare this to what the Department of Labor and Employment (DoLE) says: A
family of six needs P17,820 a month in order to survive. This means that there
is living salary gap of P7,881.00.
A study released by the International Labor Organization (ILO) and the United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) also show
that teachers in the Philippines work an average of 1,176 hours per year and
teach classes of over 50 students. Definitely, whatever salary they receive does
not correspond to their load of work.
Likewise in a congressional report in 2000, Rep. Jesli A. Lapus pictured the
dismal state of public school teachers. Among the congressman’s findings were
that teachers are paying from 36 percent to 108 percent effective interest plus
fees to private lenders accredited by the Department of Education (DepEd).
Loans
In a DepEd study conducted during the term of Secretary Roco, a teacher on the
average has about 16 non-statutory deductions, including payments for insurance
premiums and loans. "So numerous are the teachers' non-statutory deductions that
whereas in most public and private entities a pay slip is usually about
one-third the size of an 8 1/2" x 11" sheet of paper, the DepEd pay slips run
across two sheets of computer forms, with as many as 50 lines of non-statutory
deductions," it stated.
Palatino, who is also a young Education graduate from the University of the
Philippines, said nobody but the government should be blamed for this problem.
"We can't blame our teachers for leaving the country or for working as
housemaids,” he told Bulatlat. “They have all the reason to do that since the
government is not giving them the right compensation and the respect they
deserve as educators. It is the government's inaction to teachers' legitimate
demand for salary increase and other benefits that drives more teachers and
fresh Education graduates out of schools where they really belong."
The only national assessment which can be used to gauge the quality of outputs
of Teacher Education is the Licensure Examination for Teachers (LET). Republic
Act 3687 known as the Professionalization Act for Teachers transferred the
responsibility of Teacher Certification from the Civil Service Commission (CSC)
to the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) and replaced the Professional
Board Examination for
Teachers (PBET) in 1996.
The results of national licensure examinations paint a disturbing picture. The
passing rate in the 1992, 1993 and 1994 national passing percentages was only
10.60, 13.78, and 26.73, respectively. In each of these three years, the numbers
taking the test ranged from 130,000 to 140,000. In each of these three years,
the examination repeaters constituted close to 50 percent. Every year
thereafter, due to the low passing rates, the number of examinees increased
significantly.
The mean performance scores in the LET have always been below 50 percent. For
example, the mean scores of applicants for mathematics and science licenses in
1996 were only 39.19 and 39.60, respectively. The national mean score in
Filipino (46.76) was the highest of the academic subjects in 1997.
The findings from the licensure examinations given in the last years confirm
many of the findings of Dr. Lily Ann Pedro and Ma. Fe L. Augusto of the
University of the Philippines, particularly for Mathematics majors. Both studies
found that, despite the Teacher Education program's provision of courses to
satisfy units for a major or specialization, the graduates of many institutions
do not show adequate knowledge in mathematics. Tests administered to them show
very low performance scores even in basic content skills in Mathematics. The
same could be said of majors in Science and other fields.
Abilities
Many Education graduates in the provinces are also not passing the LET. Compared
to the national passing average, 2001 and 2002 results of the (LET) show that
Mindanao's average passing for both years were at least 8 percentage points
lower than the national passing average.
Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao's (ARMM) passing percentage stood at only
6.97 percent in 2002 and it consistently had the lowest passing percentage in
the previous years.
Palatino opined that the LET examinees' performance shows the low quality of
pre-service Teacher Education in the country. “Many Teacher Education
Institutions are producing half-baked graduates who add up to the bulk of LET
non-passers and unemployed or underemployed teachers,” he said. “Even these
schools are now being turned into mere for-profit diploma mills rather than as
training ground for future mentors."
If the government and the Education department will not do anything to arrest
this alarming trend, he says, the country will be seeing more classrooms with no
teachers in our schools despite an oversupply of Teacher Education graduates who
end up being housemaids here or abroad.
"How can we uplift the quality of basic and secondary education in the country
if more than 60 students are cramped up in a small classroom due to lack of
teachers?," he said.
All these, Palatino said, send a distressing signal to the education sector. “We
could only imagine what kind of students we are producing if their teachers are
not adequately equipped with the skills," he said. Bulatlat