We, Filipinos were known to have great value and high regard to Education for we believe that it plays a vital role in national development. Education has been looked into as the means of alleviating poverty, decreasing criminalities, increasing economic benefits and ultimately uplifting the standard of living of the Filipino masses. In line with this, the government on its part has been continuously investing so much resource into the education sector. As a matter of fact, the Department of Education (DepEd), the country’s biggest bureaucracy, is given the highest budget allocation among government agencies each year, as required by the 1987 Philippine Contitution. The 1987 Constitution stated that “ The State shall protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality education accessible at all levels and shall take appropriate steps to make education accessible to all.” So it means that even before the World Declaration on “Education for All” or EFA in Jomteim Thailand, which prescribed that Basic Learning needs shall be met for all by various means, the Philippines had already crafted its own program that administered most of our citizens in attaining a quality education. Along with the “Education for All”, the Philippines is also committed in the pursuance of eight time bound and specific targets under the Milleniumdeclaration which was signed on September 2000. The declaration aims to decrease the degree of poverty by half in 2015.
However, despite of legal basis, budget prioritization and extended access, Philippine education has been faced issues and different challenges on EFA’s implementation. Some of the issues that need solutions but had little improvements lately include the overcrowded classrooms, hard to access remote areas, high number of repeaters and dropouts, low passing grades, lack of particular language skills, failure to adequately respond and address the needs of people with special needs. These problems were the cause to have a considerable number of illiterate Filipinos, graduates who are not yet prepared for work and out of school youths.
The government has been trying to craft and implement some programs to achieve growth and development and break the vicious cycle of poverty. Specific areas were evaluated and identified to improve the efficiency of education system and enhance teaching-learning process and skills for global competitiveness. The targets were : a) to establish an elementary school in every barangays, b) expand access to secondary level, particularly for hard to reach populations and , c) improve the school folding capacity and quality of education.
In line with the areas that need to be developed, the government crafted strategies to innovate their targets. The strategies were as follows: 1) support for Basic Education 2) Development and Welfare of Teachers 3) Internal efficiency of Primary Education 4) External Efficiency of Schools 5) Progressive Curricular Reforms 6) System of assessment and Testing 7) Backlogs in the School System 8) Alternative Learning System.
As of 2005, the improvement in the implementation of EFA has been very minimal. Some indicators suffered regression. There was a decreasing rate of enrolment, dropout rate has been increasing despite of the efforts, there are still many students who could not be able to complete the full ten years of basic education. The reality is that, formal education has not achieved what it was supposed to achieve. Our schools right now are on quandary on hoe to keep children in school with the increasing rate of dropouts. The functional literacy of Filipinos is at its minimum reflecting the sad state of education. There are rampant problems of child labor, where children who are supposed to be in school are working to help augment family income. The gap between the few who are rich and the majority who are poor become wider and bigger. Now, what education got to do with this? If experts claimed that education is an instrument for national development, where does the problem lie? The country should identify the status of every unit of the society and the other underlying factors that caused poverty. It also means that the country needs to intensify more the efforts to be exerted in ensuring the recovery of lost grounds so the EFA’s target for this year 2015 will be met. To attain the 2015 goal and targets of EFA, the country also needs to implement policies, programs and projects that will address the needs of specific learners, especially those belonging to the unreached learners and underserved groups such as the children engaged in labor, street children, children with special needs(Gifted and Differently abled), Muslim Children and children in confilct- affected areas.
By: Randy M. Bongco | Teacher III | Orion Elementary School
