Improving Philippine Education Through Synergia

Blogger's Note: The two articles in this post illustrates the problems and hopes for Philippine education system. The government-run colleges and universities must reengineer themselves and focus/target industry and market requirements while making themselves affordable and profitable at the same time. The University of the Philippines (UP), recognizing that even if 95% of the government - from the President of the Republic of the Philippines to lowly paper-pushing clerk - came from its bellows will never give it the funds to sustained it, must now learn to cull, combine and create new programs that would make it sustainable. For example, we have a European Languages program. It should be complemented by an Asian Languages program. UP should also recognize that given its sheer number of campuses, each one should be given the focus to specific groups of industries/markets to make it more sensible rather than every campus offerring the same program. An example is the duplication of engineering programs of UP Diliman campus (electrical, chemical, electronics and communication, industrial, mechanical, etc.) by UP Los Baños campus. I think UPLB should concentrate in agricultural engineering, geotechnical/geologic/geohazard engineering, biotechnical/medical engineering and combined chemical-sanitary-environmental-safety engineering (Environmental and Safety Engineering should be its name). This are mere suggestions and hopefully the powers-that-be can read this note for them to think about. How about Community Development program for UP Mindanao? Leadership and Teambuilding for UP Open University? I hope UP can be the innovate and dynamic university it once been.


Cost-sharing
First posted 00:45am (Mla time) June 04, 2005 By Inquirer News Service
http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=39126

THE COMMISSION on Higher Education has reported that 10 percent of college students who would have enrolled in private colleges and universities have gone to state and local institutions because of financial difficulties. These students could not anymore afford the prohibitive cost of tuition in private schools, which has been compounded by the financial troubles plaguing the pre-need industry. The phenomenon puts extra pressure on state and local colleges and universities (SCUs and LCUs).

In a way, the pressure may yet compel reforms in SCUs and LCUs. Public institutions of higher learning have no choice but to absorb the exodus because they are, by virtue of their being established by national or local legislation, precisely meant to widen access to education.
The exodus should not be viewed as an argument for setting up more SCUs and LCUs. Even the Senate committee on education headed by Sen. Juan Flavier has called for a moratorium on this. Many of these schools have been set up for political reasons. They basically are vote-getters while providing an excuse for legislators and other officials to tap into the national government budget. While they respond to problems of access to education, they hardly answer the need for quality education and sustainability.

In order to deliver quality education, SCUs and LCUs must consider the bottom line: whether or not they have the resources to deliver it. The problem of resources is what compels private schools to increase tuition at the risk of losing students.

If private schools have only tuition with which to mobilize resources, public schools have subsidies and tuition paid as a minimum counterpart by their clientele. It could not be otherwise.

No matter how much student activists argue that education is a right of citizens that should be provided free by the state, there's no gainsaying the fact that providing education entails costs that cannot be shouldered alone by the state. And since a college degree is a ticket to gainful living, education may be viewed as an investment that should be made not alone by the state, but also by the person who would ultimately benefit from the investment. Education requires a sharing of costs.

Student activists will always protest any increase in tuition especially in state universities, like the Philippines. But even the premiere state university should have the wherewithal, aside from the shrinking subsidy from the state, to provide sustainable quality education. Its socialized tuition scheme, in fact, hardly even begins to correct the fact that children coming from families that can afford to pay the higher tuition charged by private schools corner a disproportionate share of the freshman slots every year, easing out the children of the poor who are in most need of subsidized education. The highly political call for the University of the Philippines (UP) to stop increasing tuition, if not abolish it altogether, is purely politicking.

It is in fact politics that stops UP from delivering sustainable quality education. Its Diliman campus is noted for having buildings for just about every department or program (cottage industry and small and medium-scale businesses, industrial relations, etc.), funded usually with the help of politicians. Many are either half-empty or half-full, depending on how you want to see it, but the campaign to seek funds for new buildings just doesn't seem to end.

But once the buildings are set up, there's hardly any budget for their maintenance. So while new buildings are being constructed left and right in Diliman, the old Arts and Sciences building is decrepit and sagging, its rooms without locks, its toilets plagued by problematic plumbing and its ceilings crashing down in some cases. UP Diliman has achieved the impossible in Philippine education: building a school complex without educational facilities.

Proper resource mobilization and effective use of available resources will enable UP to deliver education that is both quality-driven and sustainable. Effective management will also allow the state education system to allocate more resources to other SCUs such as the Polytechnic University of the Philippines and the Philippine Normal University, which are by and large delivering good education but whose systems are saddled by too many students and too little resources.


Synergeia way
First posted 00:45am (Mla time) June 04, 2005 By Solita Collas-Monsod, Inquirer News Service http://news.inq7.net/opinion/index.php?index=2&story_id=39127

THE START of the school year always brings with it horror stories concerning the education sector. Complaints reach their peak about problems such as the lack of classrooms, buildings, textbooks, teachers, etc.-their poor quality especially -- as well the declining share of education in the government budget, the declining per capita expenditure on students. That's the bad news.

But let us focus on some good news, for a change. And that is that local communities, if they but realize it, have the power to improve the education of their children. What's more, the results can be seen almost immediately; the children are pre-tested and post-tested at the beginning and end of the academic year, respectively.

This is the message of Synergeia, a foundation that has made significant progress, despite its relatively young age (founded in 2002), in improving the academic performance of elementary-school children in the areas where it operates.

That is not all. In the process, empowerment takes place, not only for the children, who realize there's nothing wrong and everything right with them, but also for parents, who realize that they can have a large say in the priorities of school budgets and be active participants in their child's schooling, and the teachers, who benefit from professional teacher development programs.

What is the track record of the communities that have partnered with Synergeia in school reform programs? Take Naga City, whose mayor, Jess Robredo, sits on the board of Synergeia. In one year, the test scores of its students in the program improved by 17 percentage points in English, by 15 percentage points in Math, and by 15 percentage points in Science.
Naga is not a fluke. The same thing has happened in Lipa, where Mayor Vilma Santos is an enthusiastic participant. In 2004, the percentage of independent readers (those who can answer 5 out of 5 questions testing comprehension) increased from 25 percent to 54 percent, while the percentage of frustrated readers (cannot answer any questions) decreased from 42 percent to 13 percent.

There are other success stories, particularly in reading proficiency.

Considering how young Synergeia is, its progress has been phenomenal. Its Education Governance Program is being implemented in more than 250 municipalities, with 450,000 children enrolled in a Synergeia reading and mathematics program. This is expected to expand to 19 new areas this year.

What accounts for its success? Fr. Bienvenido Nebres, SJ, who has done a great deal of research on Philippine education (it was from him that I was first made aware of the education crisis in the country), has stated categorically that there are only two factors that explain the difference between a good school and a bad school in the Philippines: a good principal and a supportive local community. Synergeia early on realized that this was indeed the case, and has focused on the second factor and sought to create supportive local communities, using a participatory and community-based approach.

Further, it has learned that a supportive local community doesn't mean merely an abundance of financial resources from the local government. Makati City, for example, is one of the most well endowed with financial resources for education, yet its students rack up some of the lowest scores in the standard achievement tests. Adequate resources are certainly necessary, but not sufficient. You need the active participation of the parents, teachers, and local leaders as well. It is they who set the priorities and the targets.

The best springboard for getting all these, Synergeia finds, is through the local school boards. Hence, the move to "reinvent" them, so that they can be used to mobilize community support for the implementation of school reforms.

What is significant is that any failure of the national government in education doesn't have to spell doom for education reforms as far as resources are concerned. The Special Education Fund Tax (SEF), which is a one percent tax on the assessed value of real properties imposed by local governments to help finance public education, is on the average under-collected (only 54 percent of the potential amounts), and can be very inefficiently used. A proactive school board changes all that, as Bulacan Gov. Josie Cruz will tell you.

What is the first step in mobilizing the local community? I recently had the opportunity to see how it is done, at the launch of the Synergeia program in Upi, Maguindanao. About 600 townsfolk -- parents, teachers, school nurses, local officials and DepEd administrators -- gathered to participate in their first-ever Education Summit.

When Mayor Ramon Piang reported that 60 percent of Upi students drop out after Grade I, and that based on reading proficiency they are two grades behind, they were aghast. And in workshops, the consensus was that the survival rate must be improved to 90 percent, and learning scores should be increased to 90 percent.

How? Through a two-pronged approach: improved learning systems in the subject areas (i.e., teacher training, provision of workbooks) and strengthened community support by training parents to be active participants in their children's schooling.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Upi children are going to be doing much better in school, thanks to more active parents, better trained teachers, and enlightened local officials.

That has got to be good news.

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