May 19, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino today said that the government’s preparations for school opening fall short of addressing the perennial back-to-school woes that students experience yearly.

Palatino said that the Department of Education’s Oplan Balik-Eskwela fails to portray the real state of the basic and secondary educational system. “Our real problems this school opening are still the lack of classrooms, facilities and teachers,” Palatino said.

Citing data by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Institute for Statistics, Palatino said that Philippine classrooms are among the most crowded in Asia. UNESCO figures show that class size in the Philippine public elementary schools (43.9) pales in comparison to Malaysia (31.7), Thailand (22.9), Japan (28.6) and even in India (40). The Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT), meanwhile, estimated classroom shortage at 41,905 last school year.

“This figure will surely balloon as students of age to attend school increase by 2.3 percent yearly,” Palatino said.

“Even DepEd’s own studies reveal that public schools nationwide are in decrepit conditions. Some 80 percent of them have no running water, 60 percent have no toilets, 40 percent have no ceilings and 50 percent have no electricity,” Palatino said.

He added, “Furthermore, to achieve the ideal classroom-to- student ratio, the DepEd will have to hire almost 30,000 additional teachers.”

“These are facts and figures that DepEd’s back-to-school program fails to present, na ang mga estudyante ngayong balik-eskwela ay papasok sa mga bulok-eskwela,” said Palatino.

He blamed the sorry state of public education on government mis-prioritization and poor education spending aggravated by rampant corruption. “Unless the government addresses these, back-to-school woes will be worse than ever.” ###