Retrogressive: The Apparent State of Philippine Education
Surviving is a reasonable term for the day-to-day efforts of the masses to secure their basic human needs, currently considering some of these as a privilege and visibly seeing the difference per social class. A necessity to ensure that society experiences an accessible future by resolving world problems such as pollution, hunger, poverty, and education despite the stratum of a person, and that is the core of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) or Global Goals.
Last 2015, the United Nations (UN), with its General Assembly, sanctioned 17 SDGs by having 169 targets to attain a sustainable society when the world reaches 2030 (NEDA, n.d.). The UN made 17 Goals that unified each of them, considering every global issue is interconnected but has its definite significance in economic, social, and environmental aspects.
The Global Goals extend the purpose of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to have a livable society at present and for future generations. MDGs launched last September 2000 focused on the developing countries to prosper by 2015 or suitably decrease the dilemmas of signed states with eight goals (SDG Fund, n.d.), contrasting and less in-depth with the priority of SDGs.
Learning Quality Education
Among the 17 SDGs, Goal 4 is staunch to quality education with the focal goal of “Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning and opportunities for all” (UN, n.d.). It is to prevent the kids from being out-of-school youth, especially children from impoverished families, as they tend to be more meager even with education. Making an emphasis that learning is now a privilege more than a right of every person.
Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) declared that every 24th of January is the International Day of Education, a hope for society to remember that it is inadmissible to have millions of uneducated people across nations.
As stated by UNESCO (2022), International Day this year is for the underprivileged women of Afghanistan who did not have a chance to study, along with the theme of “to invest in people, prioritize education.” It also continues the pursuit of the Transforming Education Summit (TES) last September 2022.
The UN further implemented ten targets to prioritize for each nation to accomplish in 2030 in terms of Goal 4. The first three targets highlight the importance of quality, albeit of academic level — from primary to university level, and technical and vocational are consequential. While Target 4.4. focuses on students having a standard job after they graduate. Target 4.5. concerns the demographics of every child so they do not feel excluded as the world progresses. The following two targets aim for the masses to be literate and use their knowledge to create a sustainable environment. The last three targets incorporate ways of execution, such as improving institution facilities and appointing adequate educators for Goal 4 to be successful.
Provided that the Member States achieve the targets of SDG 4, this initiates more opportunities for other SDGs to flourish too. Ashour (2020) explains that a quality education hones the students to be notable graduates who benefit a nation by lowering the unemployment rate and increasing economic growth innovatively. Likewise, quality education benefits advocating gender equality as it encourages people to learn and explore different fields of education regardless of gender (Panetta & Williams, 2018, as cited in Boeren, 2019). Thus, quality education supports other goals, comparatively SDG 8 and SDG 5.
K-12 Program: A Channel to Bring Quality Education to Filipino Students
Implemented in the academic year 2012–2013 with features that would help the Philippines attain SDG 4 if effective, the K-12 Program is the current basic education curriculum in the country. It comprises universal kindergarten, four years of Junior High School, and two years of Senior High School launched later in 2016.
It was integrated into the education system of the Philippines to ensure enough time for students to master skills and concepts and guarantee that learning is retained lifelong. Supplementarily, to prepare its graduates for higher education and develop middle-level skills, employment, and entrepreneurship (Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, n.d.).
More than once, senators have deemed the need to review the program due to questions of its efficacy (Ager, 2022), but a look at its salient features and learning issues today will shed light as to whether or not it has truly been serving students the quality that it promised to bring.
Salient Features and Issues of the K-12 Program
The K-12 Program aims to strengthen early childhood development through universal access to kindergarten, emphasizing the use of children’s mother tongue and rooting learning materials to learners’ reality, history, and local culture in learning concepts of colors, numbers, shapes, and the alphabet.
Nonetheless, as part of the education reforms that came with the K-12 Program, Philippine History was extracted from high school learning. Instead, students are taught about Asian Studies and World History through Social Studies, which, in context, are both a lot more distant and less relevant to learners. Teachers’ Dignity Coalition (TDC) chairman Benjo Basas (2019) declared that the removal of Philippine history is a “blasphemy” to Filipinos’ history and national identity because this would have aided in the development of “national patrimony, nationalism and the appreciation of our own culture”.
Intertwined with the first salient feature of the K-12 Program, building proficiency through the use of mother tongue-based multilingual education aims to produce students who effectively learn through their first language and would be able to read after the 1st grade. Despite this feature, UNICEF and UNESCO (2021) still found that less than 10% of Filipino children can read simple text or comprehend a simple story which is a manifestation of learning poverty, or 10-year-olds’ inability to read and comprehend a simple story, in the Philippines.
Even though there is an emphasis on the use of Filipino students’ mother tongue in learning, the sad reality for the Philippines is that English remains the primary medium of instruction (MOI). In fact, as a rebuttal to President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s vocal support for English as the MOI, Vladimer Quetua of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) said that English is already a “big impediment” to how Filipinos learn because it gets in the way of students freely expressing themselves in the classroom because English is not their “vernacular,” and it “clips” students’ ability for thinking critically and their formulation of arguments. The spiral progression of studying concepts from simplest to more complicated is challenging also because students first have to master English to be able to comprehend mathematics and science (Quetua, 2022).
The most forward success that the K-12 Program is said to bring is that it will gear students up for paths beyond basic education through Senior High School. Students will be well-prepared should they decide to continue to higher education or if they choose to start earning money through employment or entrepreneurship. Quetua (2022) argued the reality that companies that are unhappy with the education K-12 graduates receive pay them “scant wages.”
This gives way to exploitative systems and still does not help boost Filipino families’ economic well-being. The K-12 program, propounded by ACT, promotes competition among developing nations to produce “extremely cheap, semi-skilled labor” for foreign companies.
The employment supplied is mainly contractual and offers the lowest salary in various industries. These problems serve as a statement as to why it is difficult to claim that the K-12 Program is delivering the benefits that it promised.
Dilemmas of Tertiary Education
Nevertheless, other educational domains face difficulties. The planned budget for state universities and colleges (SUCs) for 2023 is P93.3 billion, which is P10 billion less than the P103.9 billion budget for 2022. Raoul Manuel of the Kabataan party-list stated that the budget cut will affect 81 SUCs in the country and has requested that it be restored because it could affect the safe reopening of campuses amidst the pandemic (Panti, 2022). More than just the sanitization and caretaking of school facilities, it would help give school staff remuneration that guarantees their families will be provided for.
Apart from budgetary problems is the looming return of the Mandatory Reserve Officer Corps Training (MROTC). Presumed to be a way of instilling discipline, patriotism, and nationalism, it was pushed by the past administration and is presently carried over by the Sara Duterte vice-presidency. Aside from the fact that there is an existing law that allows college students in the National Service Training Program to choose between ROTC, Literacy Training Service, and Civil Welfare Training Service, MROTC is widely contested because corruption was rampant during its years of operation (Viray, 2018). There have been situations where students used monetary bribes on their officers to graduate from the program without having to fulfill their tasks. The death of 19-year-old cadet Mark Chua prompted the Philippines to end its mandatory implementation.
Efforts of the Philippine Administration
Regardless of the improvement in some portions of the educational system in the country, they will always be futile when the passing regimes would uphold primitive decisions that hinder the capabilities of students under their jurisdiction. For instance, President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. stated that sharpening the workforce training skills of the students should be the center of their basic education presently. He instructed DepEd to teach the learners how to be “productive members of the society” as they would be the “best asset” of the country (Gita-Carlos, 2022).
With that order, Marcos may produce graduates who probably become followers of their superiors since the institution taught them more skill-based learning, where information analysis was on the surface level only. Besides, sharing information nowadays is crucial as to why people need to be critical thinkers, and this comes with the need for educators to focus on teaching that in basic education since the best time to guide children with their cognitive abilities is when they are young (Danise & Lee, 2022).
Proceeding with Vice President Sara Duterte, appointed as the current DepEd Secretary even without any technical qualifications in that sector since she is not relatively an educator, caused a few queries about her plans. As explained by Cleve Arguelles, a political scientist, Duterte will have a hard time since she handles a bureaucracy in the middle of a crisis (Yang, 2022a).
Though Duterte aimlessly declared that she could fix the education crisis in six years if given another P100 billion, she did not present tactile plans along with her demand, and this caused doubts since the amount is small compared to the global standards of the budget for education (Magsambol, 2022). Until now, Duterte never mentioned her aims and where she would utilize the benefits of the P100 billion when new problems still arise in the educational system.
Occurrences akin to limited school facilities, the authorities causing agitation towards the masses, and struggling teachers are some of the few problems in Philippine education.
Stressing this out, educators were “left in the air” by the government as the 2022–2023 academic year was nearing to start, making them tend to themselves with the lack of resources per public classroom when it is supposed to be the government’s job (Bautista, 2022b).
Additionally, the Philippine National Police (PNP) confiscated placards that requested a safe return in schools from a non-government organization (NGO) offering alcohol and face masks to students in front of their school (Sarao, 2022).
The local educational system teaches educators, learners, and families to be resilient by adapting to every change and stated command when it should think of progressive actions for Filipinos to have quality education. The government is leaving the people to manage on their own as their measures for each predicament in quality education never favor the masses. They are giving solutions just for the sake of it and not because they want to solve it. A right like quality education should be easy to access, but with a misgoverned sector, it is impossible to guarantee.
SDG 4 and the Philippine Educational System
The Philippines may be on the path to achieving Target 4.1. due to the implementation of the Free Public Secondary Education Act of 1988, which provides secondary education to students in public schools. Consequently, the journey to achieving this target may take much work.
The learning poverty rate in the Philippines was at 90.9% last June 2022, so there is still a question as to whether the education being received by Filipino students is effective (World Bank, 2022). Besides, drop-out rates have a massive rise from 16.9% in January 2020 to 25.2% in April (US Agency for International Development, 2021). Target 4.2. may not be as easily attainable in the Philippines compared to other countries, as pre-primary education is not compulsory and is only offered in private institutions.
Republic Act №6972 institutionalizes the establishment of daycare centers in every barangay. However, due to the poorly equipped nature of public daycare facilities, low-income families often opt to make do with whatever scant resources are available or not enroll their children (Haligi ng Bata Inc., 2018).
Republic Act №10931, or the Universal Access to Quality Tertiary Education Law of 2017, aids Target 4.3. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) claimed that 1.6 million students benefited from the law as they no longer had to pay their tuition fees (de Vera III, 2021). Joey Salceda, Albay Representative and one of the principal authors of the passed law, said its implementation is substandard (Cepeda, 2018). Additionally, outdated skills resulting from higher education’s outdated curriculum have been one of the primary reasons being eyed by the Philippine Graduate Tracer Survey (Daily Guardian, 2020), which hinders the Philippines from hitting Target 4.4.
There have been steps taken recently that complement Target 4.5. such as DepEd Order №32, which calls for gender-inclusive school environments. Anyhow, as long as Lumad schools remain closed, indigenous people will never fully be able to receive the proper education that fits their needs.
The actions for Target 4.6 seems questionable since the Australian government advised DepEd to develop the education curriculum, as has also been seen in the low rankings of Filipino students in the assessment conducted by the World Bank in science, mathematics, and reading (Yang, 2022b). Correspondingly, the improvement of Targets 4.7. and 4.7.1. imply nonsensical since educators cannot teach the students how to adopt the learnings about sustainable development and global citizenship when they are ignorant. The progress of Target 4.A. is not continuous and feeble since the Lumad schools received dangers and attacks directly from the government (Kennedy, 2021; Diño, 2020), among the cases of why schools in the Philippines are unsafe.
Analogously, being questioned by the senate, CHED had “questionable releases” amounting to 7 billion Philippine pesos under their scholarship program (Fernandez, 2022), an adverse cause that hinders Target 4.B. from being achieved. Furthermore, Banderlipe (2021) affirmed that the regime had forgotten educators from private and public schools in the Philippines since they are always unsupported, overworked, and underpaid. Emphasized in Target 4.C. that educators are fundamental for the students to have a quality education, the Philippine administration failed to reach this until today.
The bases suggest that even if there is progress in SDG 4 in the Philippines, there are still plenty of deficiencies that the government needs to resolve in the next seven years. The quality of education that every humankind should experience appears to be challenging to secure for Filipino people. 2030 is nearing, yet the country ranked 95th among the Member States, scoring 66.64 off 100 from the 2022 Sustainable Development Report (Baclig, 2023).
The country’s problem with miseducation cannot be addressed by the Department of Education or by the Commission on Higher Education alone. It is a crisis that calls for the help of every societal sector, essentially the field of research. Especially in this competitive global era, research has played a crucial role in the burgeoning of both humanity and the industries that stemmed from both invention and innovation.
Research has the ability to transfigure matters as miniscule as concepts and can branch out to things as large-scale as societies. It can catalyze growth and progress in the Philippine educational system, but it will only thrive with the hand-in-hand cooperation of government agencies and Filipino citizens. More than just the field of research, the media is not only one of the keys to combating mis- and disinformation, but it also now has the responsibility of making it known to the public that education is vital to betterment.
As we celebrate International Education Day this January 24, Filipinos from within and outside the academe must join UNESCO’s calls for prioritizing education.
As long as solutions provided by the Philippine government remain mismatched from the problems we face, attaining inclusive and equitable education will never be within arm’s reach.
Quality education is a tool that every child can use to better themselves, and it aids in having them realize their transformative roles of ending cycles of societal injustice and poverty.
REFERENCES:
Abasola, L. (2022). Nat’l program needed to avert learning poverty: solon. Philippine News Agency. Retrieved from https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1183313#
Ager, M. (2022, June 21). Some senators favor K-12 review, but if it proves ineffective, Sotto wants old system back. Inquirer. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1614147/some-senators-favor-k-to-12-review-but-if-found-ineffective-sotto-wants-return-to-old-system
Ashour, S. (2020). Quality higher education is the foundation of a knowledge society: Where does the UAE stand? Quality in Higher Education, 1–15. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2020.1769263
Baclig, C. E. (2023, January 3). PH halfway through in achieving SDGs as 2030 deadline looms. Inquirer.net. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1712047/ph-halfway-through-in-achieving-sdgs-as-2030-deadline-looms
Banderlipe, M. R. I. (2021, July 4). Pandemic Pedagogy and the Narratives of Difference: Challenging Inequalities, Emancipating Teachers. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4142708
Bautista, J. (2022a). Unicef: Many children drop out as in-person classes reopen. Inquirer News. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1577764/unicef-many-children-drop-out-as-in-person-classes-reopen
Bautista, J. (2022b, November 1). Public school teachers bear class opening difficulties. Inquirer.net. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1687696/public-school-teachers-bear-class-opening-difficulties
Boeren, E. (2019, March 15). Understanding Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on “quality education” from micro, meso and macro perspectives. Int Rev Educ 65, 277–294. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-019-09772-7
Cabalza, D. (2022). Alliance of Concerned Teachers wants ‘overhaul’ of K-12. Inquirer. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1630886/teachers-group-wants-overhaul-of-k-12
Cepeda, M. (2018). 7 problems with free tuition law implementation according to Salceda. Rappler. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/nation/217335-free-tuition-law-implementation-problems-says-salceda/
Daily Guardian. (2020). New college grads ‘mismatch’ to their jobs. Retrieved from https://www.dailyguardian.com.ph/new-college-grads-mismatched-to-their-jobs/
Danise, A., & Lee, H. (2022, August 17). Critical Thinking Skills Not Emphasized By Most Middle School Teachers. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/helenleebouygues/2022/08/17/critical-skills-not-emphasized-by-most-middle-school-teachers/
Diño, N. (2020, September 18). Dwindling numbers: Lumad schools continue to suffer closures, attacks during pandemic. Rappler. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/moveph/lumad-schools-continue-to-suffer-closures-attacks-coronavirus-pandemic/
Fernandez, D. (2022, August 11). Hontiveros seeks probe into P7-B ‘questionable releases’ under CHEd scholarship agency. Inquirer.net. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1645028/hontiveros-pushes-probe-on-p7-billion-questionable-releases-under-ched-scholarship-agency
Gita-Carlos, R. A. (2022, September 20). PBBM wants PH education to focus on skills training. Philippine News Agency. Retrieved from https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1184072
Haligi ng Bata Inc. (2018). Improving Public Daycare Centers and Youth Centers. Retrieved from https://haligingbata.com/improving-public-daycare-centers-and-youth-centers/
Kennedy, C. A. (2021, March 2). Fighting For An Education: Lumad Schools In The Philippines Under Attack. The Organization for World Peace. Retrieved from https://theowp.org/reports/fighting-for-an-education-lumad-schools-in-the-philippines-under-attack/
Magsambol, B. (2022, September 28). Sara Duterte to fix education in 6 years if given P100 billion. Is this enough? Rappler. Retrieved from https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/in-depth/sara-duterte-to-fix-education-if-given-billions-is-this-enough/
Malipot, M.H. (2022, July 1). Make Filipino medium of instruction not English, PBBM told. Manila Bulletin. Retrieved from https://mb.com.ph/2022/07/01/make-filipino-medium-of-instruction-not-english-pbbm-told/?amp
Mateo, J. (2019). Teachers want History, Filipino subjects back in the curriculum. Philstar. Retrieved https://www.philstar.com/other-sections/education-and-home/2019/09/05/1949097/teachers-want-history-filipino-subjects-back-curriculum
NEDA. (n.d.). About Sustainable Development Goals — SDGs — Philippines. SDGs — Philippines. Retrieved from https://sdg.neda.gov.ph/about-sustainable-development-goals/
Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines. (n.d.). The K to 12 Basic Education Program. Retrieved from https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/k-12/
Panti, L.T. (2022). Lawmakers call on colleagues to undo P10-B fund cut for SUCs under 2023 budget. GMA News. Retrieved https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/845556/lawmakers-call-on-colleagues-to-undo-p10-b-fund-cut-for-sucs-under-2023-budget/story/
Rocamora, J.A.L. (2021). 1.6M Pinoy students benefit from free higher educ program. Philippine News Agency. Retrieved from https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1140715
Sarao, Z. (2022, August 22). PNP denies harassment of NGOs near QC school. Inquirer.net. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1651205/pnp-denies-harassment-of-ngos-near-qc-school
SDG Fund. (n.d.). From MDGs to SDGs. Sustainable Development Goals Fund. Retrieved from https://www.sdgfund.org/mdgs-sdgs
UNESCO. (2022, January 24). International Day of Education. UNESCO. Retrieved from https://www.unesco.org/en/days/education
United Nations. (n.d.). Goal 4 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Sustainable Development Goals. Retrieved from https://sdgs.un.org/goals/goal4
Viray, P.L. (2018). Why ROTC is no longer mandatory. Philippine Star. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2018/11/26/1871897/why-rotc-no-longer-mandatory
Yang, A. Y. (2022a, June 22). Sara Duterte may have ‘a very difficult time’ at DepEd, analyst says. The Philippine Star. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2022/06/22/2190174/sara-duterte-may-have-a-very-difficult-time-deped-analyst-says
Yang, A. Y. (2022b, June 29). DepEd urged to prioritize better literacy, numeracy in early school years. The Philippine Star. Retrieved from https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2022/06/29/2191788/deped-urged-prioritize-better-literacy-numeracy-early-school-years
