The deterioration in the quality of our educational system continues to send out alarm signals to our political leaders, educational planners and Filipino citizens. The list of “to dos” in policies and programs gets longer with new knowledge on needed reforms. And it appears that most of the weaknesses of our learning system are the consequences of inadequate government spending.
The latest published report from the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) notes that although we have a policy thrust to put education first in the list of budgetary priorities, the reality however is that government has been under investing in the sector.
Thus, the recommendation based on analysis of budgetary spending and test results and assessments of student performance are to (1) Increase our budgetary allocation for education four times what it is now to make it competitive globally, and (2) ensure that spending goes to priorities such as (a) improve quality of Mother Tongue-Multilingual learning ; (b) focus on teacher quality; (c) leverage innovative technology like High-Touch, High-Tech which uses AI or artificial intelligence to improve learning by assessing strengths of individual learners; and (e) scale up good practices – peer mentoring, early reading, improvement of school libraries and make reading fun.
“Since 1990, public spending in education relative to gross domestic product (GDP) had been at most 3.8 percent (in 1998) dipping to 2.8 percent in 2019,” according to Jose Ramon Albert, Lovelaine Basillote, and Mika Munoz who came out with recommendations in their report, “We need to invest more in learners, learners, learners!”
The 7.4 percent increase in DepEd’s budget to P605.74 billion is a “pittance” compared to the 52.9 percent increase for Public Works and Highways, 70.5 percent for Transportation, and 16.4 percent for National Defense, they said.
Noting that the government has been investing heavily in infrastructure with its “Build, Build, Build,” it ought to have an investment program for its learners, they said.
In their policy note, the authors rationalized their recommendations by citing our commitment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals to “ensure inclusive and equitable learning opportunities for all,” consistent with our constitution’s policy declaration on mandatory and quality education and maintaining free public education at the primary and secondary levels. It also noted how we implemented goals to achieve Universal Primary Education (UPE) through Balik Aral, programs, the Kindergarten Education Act, the Enhanced Basic Education Act, the 4 P’s which have “incentivized the poor to send their children to school, and how we had managed to reduce drop-outs. With “changes in our socioeconomic situation, we had to focus on quality learning (SDG 4), its success dependent on our ability to equip learners with competencies to navigate a world filled with volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.”
But although we have expressed strong commitment to the SDG goals, we have failed to infuse the needed budgetary support/ Our spending for education has never reached four percent of our GDP which is low relative to what our Southeast Asian neighbors are spending – Singapore (25/8 percent in 2018); Brunei Durusalam (4.4 percent in 2016); Malaysia (4.4 percent in 2019), Vietnam, (4.2 percent in 2018); and Indonesia (3.6 percent in 2015). Philippine spending per student is among the lowest globally.
Thus, based on analysis of the 2018 Programme for Student International Student Assessment (PISA) test, results, our country needs to increase its education spending by as much as four times to reach the average global reading proficiency. Doubling the current spending could increase the reading proficiency level by around 10 percent.
But it does matter where budgets are spent. We must ensure that spending is focused on priorities such as upgrading the policy thrust on Mother Tongue-Based Multilingual Learning, upgrading quality of teachers, shifting to use of innovative technology solutions such as High-Touch, High-Tech or use of artificial intelligence to improve learning, scale up good practices like peer mentoring, promoting early reading and improving school libraries.
The PIDS study reinforces earlier findings of Rizal Buendia et al (Philippine Sector Assessment US AID, 2011) where the authors noted similar problems such as low investment in education,as well as failure of the government to meet the resource requirements for UPE. Additional resources were primarily from loans rather than grants.
The authors however focused on other limitations such as piecemeal reforms which needed to be integrated, and trifocalization where each of the three agencies – Commission on Higher Education, TESDA, and DepEd were to be transformed into self-governing bodies. But only for a short time. It never got off the ground and for good reason. Which is that it failed to take into account an important cultural factor – the hierarchical structure of Philippine society.
Higher education was found to be underperforming and not responsive to the emerging knowledge economy. It was not generating enough research and continues to show poor performance in licensure examinations. The latter can be traced to the shortage of qualified and competent faculty.
A World Bank Skills Report in 2009 had likewise identified serious gaps in foundational skills – problem-solving, critical thinking, initiative, and creativity.
We trust that these findings and recommendations would be further synthesized and analyzed and translated into legislation for the next Congressional Commission on Education. Needless to say they demand some sense of urgency!
Increase government spending on education
