Robredo urges declaration of ‘education crisis’ in Philippines
MANILA: Vice President Leni Robredo urged the government to declare an “education crisis” to enable the government to take immediate steps to resolve the problems of the country’s educational system that have since worsened due to the disastrous impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
“I think we should declare an education crisis so we can give more atention to it,” Robredo said in reaction to World Bank ( WB) report which disclosed that “more than 80 per cent of the (Filipino) children do not know what they should know.”
The WB has since apologised as demanded by Education Secretary Leonor Briones and Finance Secretary Carlos Dominguez who protested that the study “shamed” the Philippines which was also not given the chance to react to its findings.
“Rather than being defensive,” Robredo said, “we should do every thing to subvert this crisis because if we don’t the children will suffer.” Besides, she noted that the WB did not apologise especially for its findings, saying these were confirmed by other studies over the sad state of the country’s educational system.
Robredo cited as an example what she called the “wide divide” in online class accessibility among private and public school students during the pandemic. Based on Department of Education data, she said 41.2 per cent of classes in private schools are done online as against the 2.1 per cent in public schools.
On the other hand, 87.4 per cent of the public school pupils are done through printed modules as against the 28 per cent in private schools based on the same date, according to Robredo.
And that’s not all. Robredo said more than one million students did not enroll for the present schoolyear while 1,179 private schools permanently closed for economic reasons for lack of enrollees mainly due to the pandemic.
In a related development, administration Congressman Eduardo Gullas of Cebu province in the Visayas called for a “retooling” for public school teachers to help improve the country’s poor educational system.