“We must make education everyone’s business.”
— PBEd President Dr. Chito Salazar
Short link: https://wp.me/paaccn-QkV
- EDD K. USMAN | X (Twitter): @edd1819 | Instagram: @bluestar0910 |Facebook: SDN – SciTech & Digital News
PASAY CITY, July 7 (SDN) — Philippine education is facing a systemic crisis, with a gauntlet of huge challenges that must be addressed and resolved, or else another generation of Filipinos will finish their studies bereft of the skills they need in the outside world.
The Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) headed by Dr. Chito Salazar president, made what could be a grim observation during a press conference here today, Monday, as they unveiled a report they dubbed the “2025 State of Philippine Education” here at the Tryp Hotel, Seaside, Mall of Asia (MOA) Complex.
“We really need to focus on the problems. This is the right time for the right leadership. The problems of education are large and huge and they are continuing.
“We must make education everyone’s business,” Salazar says.
Consider some of the problems ailing basic education in the country as gleaned from the PBEd report, which says, among others, that the systemic crisis buffeting education is affecting national productivity.
- Of 10 learners, 9 can’t understand simple text.
- On teachers, 62 percent of them are assigned to teach outside of their specialization.
- Only 7 percent of learners complete pathway from Grade 1 to college.
- When it comes to college students, 39 percent drop out
PBEd Executive Director Hanibal Camua said the country’s public school system has hundreds of thousands of backlogs in classrooms, and lack of teachers also runs in the hundreds of thousands.
When asked to give five major challenges, problems ailing education in the country, Salazar mentioned three, while making it clear they are his personal opinion, and not of PBEd.
- 1. There’s a need for accountability that includes local government units (LGUs).
- 2. Need for quality teachers.
- 3. Need to focus on early childhood learning becauss the problem starts from 0 to 5 grade level.
Learners can’t wait; the next three years make decisive moves for decentralization
Camua supplied two.
- 4. Need to realign curricula and training with the demands of industry to solve the mismatch in degrees with industry needs.
- Need for a whole-of-society approach to include the private sector in addressing problema in the education system.
The PBEd executive director also cited the low ratio in terms of the amount of budget given by the government vis-a-vis percentage of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), which this year is 3.4 percent as compared to the global standard of 4 to 6 percent, according to the United Nations following the Incheon and Paris Declarations (www.un.org).
Acknowledging that in the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA) education in cornered the largest chunk at Php1.055 trillion out of the Php6.352 trillion national budget, Camua said that “more than the budget, we need to see where the budget is allocated.”
He also noted that the Philippines has never broken the 4 percent threshold when it comes to education sector’s budget out of the GDP. “So, it is still far from the ideal ratio.”
A search on the internet shows that Norway has the world’s biggest “expenditures on education institutions as a percentage of GDP” at 6.6 percent. Following at second highest is Chile at 6.5 percent, Australia fourth at 6.1 percent, the United States and United Kingdom both fifth at 6.0 percent (www.nces.es.gov).
Speaking further, Camua claimed that “the window for major reforms is closing fast. If we don’t act now another generation will pasanin our classrooms without the skills and the tool they need.”
The PBEd officials batted for the decentralization of education and must be the engine of the change the country is looking for that must translate into complete and time-bound access.
Camua gave an example. “We need to institutionalized the local school board, the special education fund, and the schoolbleadership…so that decisions on teacher hiring and solutijns, projects and programs are actually made where the learning happens.”
He adds: “We need to scale up the ECCD and the implementation of the Aral Law and remediation programs to make sure every child can read, write and do math at the right level before it’s too late. ”
Camua also endorsed the realignment of TVET (technical vocational education and training) and higher education curricula with industry demands in order that when graduates leave school they are ready for real jobs and real employment.
“Lastly, we need to keep investing in teacher support, school leadership and better classroom to learner ratio because quality education and (better) connected classrooms remain the foundation of all learning,” he emphasized.
The country’s learners, he pointed out, cannot wait, saying the next three years must turned into years of decisive and decentralized actions, “so that when we look back we can say that we used this narrow window to (address) this crisis to turn the tide for our learners.”
Salazar raised the need to work together, collaborate “so we should not miss this chance.” (√)