Make public schools local

It is obvious that we need more than the million plus DepEd bureaucracy to fast track the resurrection of our international reputation badly tarnished by results of recent international tests placing our children at the bottom of a list of many countries in terms of reading and math skills. More than our bruised national ego, our learning poverty of 90 percent dooms the economic future of our country.

We need more heads, hands and feet beyond DepEd to work on remedies. Some programs have been announced by DepEd to respond to the urgent problem but given the humongous bureaucracy’s track record, we cannot reasonably expect to see improvements quickly enough. We need to do something drastic. And the obvious drastic move is to reduce the burden of responsibility of DepEd and start getting LGUs on board.

Our educational system is probably one of the most nationally centric in the world. And from experiences elsewhere, this over centralized system is not able to produce quality results. The Philippine Business for Education or PBed has pointed out this problem early in the Duterte administration but was ignored. “It’s time to seriously consider decentralizing Philippine basic education,” PBed observed.

“First, the numbers: There are over 23 million students going to 76,534 public and private schools, and 846,455 teachers in the Philippine basic education system. Those working in administration under the Office of the Secretary of Education number to 200,000. Clearly, the system is a governance behemoth that any manager no matter how good would have a hard time handling centrally.”

The World Bank has pointed out that elsewhere in the world, “many developing countries have devolved the responsibility for education services to local governments in an effort to improve educational quality and make public spending more efficient. Advocates of decentralization have argued that bringing decision-making closer to schools makes public policy more responsive to local needs, strengthens accountability and fosters innovation.”

The bureaucrats at DepEd head office may resist any moves to take their prerogatives away. Too much money is being made on purchases at the central office level for them to want to give that up. Besides, they are so used to doing things this way and bad habits are hard to let go.

Devolving public education should have been done long ago when the Local Government Code was implemented. Health and agriculture, also basic services, have been devolved a long time ago. Making LGUs responsible for educating their constituents makes it easier for the local communities to monitor and be involved in the education of their children. In many cases, the LGUs may have more resources to use for education, like the Special Education Fund which every landowner pays yearly together with their property taxes.

There is another good reason to devolve education now. The Mandanas ruling effectively increases the National Tax Allotment (NTA) the national treasury gives LGUs. This 38 percent increase in the overall NTA settlements at a total of P959 billion or almost 20 percent of the 2022 national budget of P5.024 trillion and roughly four percent of GDP.

PBed, in calling for decentralization, noted that “the sheer size of the system has meant problems of wasted resources, detrimental effect on education quality and equity. The World Bank in 2016 estimated that about a quarter of the maintenance and other operating expenses budget gets lost as funds get disbursed from the central office to the schools. Moreover, well-resourced schools continue to get resources they don’t need, leaving some schools and students behind.

“Currently, many teachers have poor subject content knowledge that has further exacerbated students’ poor performance in the national achievement test. But the information asymmetry natural to centralized systems has meant generic and ineffective professional development programs for teachers…In many countries, decentralization has increased school participation and achievement.

“Indonesia, for example, rolled out a decentralization program in Java that increased student test scores and community participation. In Kenya, empowering school councils to hire and monitor teachers increased student test scores and improved teacher performance. In Mexico, the Apoyo a la Gestión Escolar program that gave grants to parent associations in rural areas reduced student failure and repetition. In the Philippines, early experiments in school-based management have resulted in an eight percent increase in national achievement test scores.

“Delivery of education should be local to lessen levels of information and make the bureaucracy more manageable. Needs would theoretically be easily articulated and the lines to accountability are short-circuited. Moreover, this would empower local chief executives to define their education and human resource development agenda that is supportive of the local development plan.”

DepEd may choose to phase in devolution and start with LGUs with proven capability in handling the public schools in their areas. Cities, especially in NCR are good examples. Makati, in particular, has shown an outstanding record in managing public schools in the city. DepEd should not delay devolution to capable LGUs. Then we can get a good comparison of outcomes.

As PBed pointed out, “They say that it takes a village to raise a child. Therefore, community participation should be encouraged. As families are given more say over the education of their children, they become more invested and equal partners in ensuring education quality. Research is on the side of participation, as this has been proven to increase school participation and learning.”

Boo Chanco’s email address is bchanco@gmail.com. Follow him on X or Twitter @boochanco