This story
was taken from Bulatlat, the Philippines's alternative weekly
newsmagazine (www.bulatlat.com, www.bulatlat.net, www.bulatlat.org).
Vol. V, No. 9, April 10-16, 2005
No Graduation, No
Jobs for Poor Filipino Students
April is the time for the
graduation of students in the elementary, high school and college levels. There
is happiness in the faces of both parents and students when the latter receive
their diplomas. Is this feeling shared by majority of Filipinos, or do most of
the youth have are forced to do other things than study?
BY CARL MARC RAMOTA
Public schools offer free tuition for elementary
and high school students. This may account for high enrollment there, but the
failure of most students to graduate could be explained by analyzing situation
of the country’s educational system. In school year 2003-2004,
total high school enrolment was pegged at 6,270,208, of which 80 percent were in
public high schools. And out of the 12,982,349 elementary students enrolled,
almost 93 percent (12,061,675) studied in public schools.
While participation rates in elementary and high
school may be increasing, data on the rates of completion, survival, dropout and
retention are not showing substantial improvements. The dropout rate, in fact,
is increasing.
End of the road
China de Vera, 16, is a senior student at
Quirino High School in Quezon City and chair of the high school chapter of the
League of Filipino Students (LFS). She will be graduating next month.
Instead of being excited about her graduation,
de Vera feared that she and most of her batchmates may not be able to enter
college. “Only a few are given (that) opportunity. For most us, high school
graduation marks the end of our days in school.” Her views reflect the signs
of the times. Out of the six million students who were able to enter high
school, only 2.4 million or 60 percent entered college in 2002-2004. While
graduation rate among high school students was pegged at 90.62 percent in that
year, cohort survival rate from 1st year to 4th year
college was only 63.88 percent. Completion rate was even lower - only 58.62
percent. Cohort survival is computed
by determining the number of entrants and then knowing how many of them entered
the last level of education. Completion rate, on the other hand, refers to the
percentage of students who graduated from an educational level. De Vera said that public
high school students like her who decide to go to college have no other option
but to enroll in state universities and colleges (SUCs) where tuition is
relatively low compared to private schools. Unfortunately, only a few are
admitted due to the SUCs’ high cut-off mark and limited slots.
The massive cuts in the SUC budget and
rationalization policy of the Arroyo administration have already forced the
closure or merger of several SUCs. From 271 in 1996, there were only 173 SUCs
left by 2002. “It is therefore not
surprising why most high school students just stop schooling after graduation
and start working. Unfortunately, there are also no available jobs so most of us
end up unemployed, or engage in anti-social activities like drugs and
prostitution,” she said. Ironically, those enrolled
in tertiary schools are also having a hard time finishing it. Data from the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)-National
Commission in the Philippines
showed that the cohort survival rate from first to fourth year college was only
22 percent. College dropout rate, on the other hand, was pegged at 73 percent. Venancio Cabugos, 23, is an
irregular political science major at Adamson University in Manila. He had to
take on two part-time jobs to support his education. He earns a living through
commissions received from selling tickets for a theater group and arranging
educational tours for a travel agency. Previously, he worked as a waiter in a
bar in Malate. He admitted that he had to
reduce his academic load and skip classes because of his part-time jobs.
“Sometimes, I go directly to class from a field trip without sleep. I cannot
afford to give up my jobs since I have to raise at least P13,000 ($238.66, based
on an exchange rate of P54.47 per U.S. dollar) for my tuition alone every
semester. Aside from that, there are a lot of things that you need to pay to
live here in Manila,” he said in Filipino.
The same was true for Alpha Carole Pontalan, a
sophomore student at the University of the Philippines’ College of
Law who
filed a leave of absence this semester and now works for a call center. She said
she had to stop schooling for a while to support her family in Bicol and save
for her future expenses in law school.
The drop-out race
A study by the National Youth Commission (NYC)
in 1997 revealed that one in four barangays has no elementary schools,
depriving some 1.6 million children of basic education. A third of the country’s
barangays do not even have complete elementary schools, making primary
education still inaccessible.
The average elementary cohort survival rate for
the Philippines was 68.6 percent in 1997.
This means that out of a hundred who enter Grade
I, only 68 of them normally finish Grade VI.
Survival rate in high school also showed a
slight decline, from 74.7 percent in 1983-1984 to 73.3 percent in 1995-1996.
This rate indicates that roughly a quarter of first year high school students do
not reach the fourth year level.
The Functional Literacy and Exposure to Mass
Media Survey (FLEMMS) conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) in 1994
provided the following reasons why these students did not go to school: lack of
personal interest; housekeeping; and the high cost of education. A similar
survey made by the NSO on working children in 2001 stressed that the main reason
given for dropping out of school was the loss of interest of the child in going
to school, which accounted for 31 percent of total respondents. Others
complained that they could not afford to go to school because of high cost of
schooling (28 percent).
De Vera added that many students are discouraged
to study also because of the condition of schools. “Who will be encouraged to
study if there are more than 60 students cramped in a single classroom? You
cannot blame them for not going to school if they don’t even have a chair and a
textbook. Worse, most do not even have a classroom and there are some schools
where only one teacher teaches grade one to three all at the same time.”
Data from the Alliance of
Concerned Teachers (ACT) showed that in the last school year, the country was
short of 39,383 classrooms, 4,125,413 seats, 9.88 million textbooks and some
49,212 teachers.
Out of school
Many Filipino youth had to work at an early age
to help augment the family income, sacrificing their education in the process.
Worse, a lot of these working children have not even entered school.
Results of the 2002 Annual Poverty Indicators
Survey (APIS) showed that the total number of out-of-school Filipino youth were
14.7 percent or 4.84 million out of 32.96 million population aged 6 to 24 years.
Mark Ferdinand Rosello, 17, is one of the many
out-of school youth in the country. The youngest among four children, he wanted
to take up Fine Arts to become a painter. However, he had to stop studying after
his father died in 1999. He was only in his first year in high school.
He ended up doing silkscreen painting to earn a
living. He was also among the street children along Quezon Avenue who sold
newspapers or rags to motorists.
Rosello admitted that he is envious of batch
mates who will be graduating this year. Like him, many Filipino children and
youth had to stop studying and work to earn a living.
In 2001, the Philippine census
showed that four million or 16.2 percent of children aged 5-17 years old were
already economically active. This percentage was slightly higher than the 3.6
million economically active children reported in 1995. Of these children, about
40 percent were elementary undergraduate and another 32 percent had reached high
school. Thirty seven
percent of these children did their job on a seasonal basis or only during
school vacation. However, the same study also showed that a third of these
children never attended school. Majority of
these children worked as laborers and unskilled workers (2.6 million or 65
percent). Others worked as service workers and shop and market sales workers
(544,000 or 13.5 percent) and as farmers, forestry workers and fishermen
(454,000 or 11.3 percent).
Indeed, the increasing number of dropouts and
out-of-school youth negate government claims that education is accessible and
affordable to majority of Filipinos. This trend is expected to continue unless
reforms in the educational system are made that will create an atmosphere that
is conducive for education. Bulatlat © 2004 Bulatlat
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