Shortages
Notwithstanding the tirade by Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo against the officer-in-charge of the Department of Education in June, 2006, the shortages in classrooms, seats, textbooks, and teachers have worsened. The shortage of 8,443 classrooms during SY 2001-2002 worsened to 57,930 during SY 2005-2006. The lack in 2,108,173 seats during SY 2001-2002 increased to 3.48 million during SY 2005-2006. The shortage of 24.22 million textbooks during SY 2003-2004 went up to 34.7 million the next school year. And the 37,932 shortage in teachers during SY 2001-2002 worsened to 49,699 during SY 2005-2006.
The result is overcrowded classrooms exceeding 60 students per class; a severe shortage in learning materials; shorter hours for classes and teacher-student interaction; heavy teaching loads for harassed and underpaid teachers; and an environment not at all conducive to learning, not to mention the sore lack in teacher training.
Entry-level (Teacher 1) pay for teachers is at P10, 933 ($239 at an exchange rate of $1=P45.74), way below the P17, 366 ($379) monthly living wage set by the National Wages and Productivity Commission. Worse, public school teachers are deprived of their benefits because it is based on savings by the DepEd. And with the decreasing budget for education, savings are hard to come by.
Decreasing budget
The shortages and deterioration in the quality of education can be attributed to the decrease in the budget for education being allocated by the Macapagal-Arroyo administration. The government has been religiously implementing the “limited or zero growth” in government spending recommended by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to tame the government deficit and ensure debt payments in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis. This was made worse by the fiscal crisis which hit the Arroyo government in 2002. Since then, the government has drastically cut its spending.
According to the Congressional Budget and Planning Office, “the average annual growth rate of the DepEd’s budget in real terms from 2001-2006 has been negative 3.5 percent.” It also pointed out that “in terms of share of the national budget, (the 2007) DepEd budget represents one of the lowest at 11.96 percent since 1995.”
The decrease in budget allocation also affects access to basic and secondary education. Public schools are not being given budgets for Maintenance, Operating, and Other Expenses (MOOE) such as repairs and purchases of furniture, fixtures and equipment, and even in paying for the salaries of maintenance personnel. Thus, this is being shouldered by parents in the form of fees and donations.
Tertiary education
If the Macapagal-Arroyo administration has been remiss in its obligation to provide basic and secondary education to the Filipino youth, it has totally turned its back in providing access to tertiary education. Consistent with its deregulation and privatization thrusts, it has been reducing its allocation for state universities and colleges forcing the latter to increase its tuition and other fees.
The University of the Philippines implemented a 300 percent increase in its tuition from P300 ($6.55) per unit to P1, 000 ($21.86) per unit. Thus, the average tuition a UP student pays increased from P6, 000 to P20, 000 ($218 to $437) per semester. Already, UP has been experiencing an increase in its no-show rate which reflects the percentage of passers of the UP College Admission Test (UPCAT) who did not enroll. As it is, students from public schools, except those from science high schools and pilot classes, are at a disadvantage because of the competitive entrance exams considering the deteriorating quality of public school education. With the new tuition rates, more and more students from the poor majority who passed the UPCAT, would not be able to enroll at UP.
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