ACT Teachers lawmakers have found no reason to pursue the Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) Program since it did not cut the poverty rate and did not reduce the dropout rate among children who benefited from the multibillion- peso scheme.
Party-list Reps. Antonio L. Tinio and France L. Castro of ACT Teachers said that the CCT Program has failed to deliver on its promise to improve enrollment and completion rates among children of beneficiary-families in elementary and secondary schools.
“We have observed little improvement, even decreases in the enrollment and completion rates from 2011 to 2015. This, despite the hefty increases in the budget for CCT,” Castro said.
Citing data from the Department of Education (DepEd), the ACT Teachers lawmakers said that participation or net-enrollment rate (NER) for public and private schools went down by 6.05 percentage points, from 97.10 percent (14.44 million out of 14.87 million elementary school-age children) in 2011 to 91.05 percent (14.35 million out of 15.76 million) in 2015.
Elementary school-age children not enrolled in Grades 1 to 6 more than tripled from around 431,000 in 2011 to 1.41 million in 2015.
Though high-school NER increased from 64.2 percent (7.05 million out of 10.98 million high school-age youth) to 68.15 percent (7.35 million out of 10.79 million), the number of high-school-age youth not enrolled in first to fourth year remain high at 3.44 million in 2015.
Moreover, CCT, also known as Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps), did little to improve the high-school completion rate (CR).
While elementary school CR rose from 71.01 percent (10.25 million) to 84.02 percent (12.05 million), fewer youths finished high school, with the CR declining from 74.4 percent (5.25 million, or 1.8 million dropouts) in 2011 to 74.03 percent (5.44 million, or 1.9 million dropouts) in 2015.
The wide gaps between the enrollment figures for elementary and those for high school also indicate that a significant number of those in elementary school do not go on to enroll and finish high school, the two legislators argued.
Under 4Ps, a grant of P300 per child every month is given for 10 months, or a total of P3,000 every year, with a maximum of three children per household.
Children-beneficiaries aged 3 to 18 must enroll in school, and attend classes at least 85 percent of class days every month.
The Aquino administration expanded the 4Ps, increasing nearly three times its budget from P21.2 billion in 2011, P62.3 billion in 2015 to P62.7 billion last year.
For this year, 4Ps has an appropriation of P78.19 billion.
“The government has been throwing more and more of the people’s money into the 4Ps, on the promise that it will, among others, afford children from poor families the chance to go to school and finish education. But, from government’s own data, we do not see this promise being fulfilled,” Castro said.
“Instead of continuing the implementation of a failed program, the government should directly fund basic social services, like education, health and housing, that would directly help the poor and marginalized. Direct investments in public education, for instance, will enable more Filipino youth to avail themselves of complete free education,” Tinio argued. “Stop wasting the people’s money in safety nets that have been proven to be ineffective.”
“The little to no improvement in enrollment and completion rates in elementary and secondary schools reflects on the capacity of the government to provide universal access to basic education. There are still a lot of shortages in public-school education that have to be addressed, like the lack of public high schools, especially in rural areas, the low salaries that teachers and school-staff receive, and lack in facilities, especially in the proper implementation of the K to 12,” Tinio said.
1 comment
I agree. That’s a useless piece of political garbage. It only encourages vote-buying and dependency.