Private schools face the prospect of losing thousands of students due to the economic difficulties caused by this coronavirus pandemic.
The Coordinating Council of Private Educational Associations (COCOPEA), which represents the five biggest private school associations in the country and has in its fold more than 2,500 schools, told a recent Senate hearing that the enrollment rate for private education was set to drop by 50 percent, meaning around 2 million students are expected to leave private schools.
This exodus shows how the pandemic has affected the lives of many Filipino families in many ways. Unemployment in the country is at an all-time high with over 7 million Filipinos jobless (as of April 2020). As household incomes have diminished or disappeared, many harried parents have sought ways to cut various expenses. They have to make tough choices, among them foregoing private school education for their children in favor of sending them to local public schools, or other alternatives, like homeschooling.
Education Secretary Leonor Magtolis-Briones said the DepEd has taken into consideration the capacity of public schools to absorb the additional students coming from private schools. (Today,June 30, is the last day DepEd will be accepting enrollment applications for public schools.)
The Commission on Higher Education said it also expects a similar decline in enrollment in private colleges and universities.
The decline in enrollees has already forced a number of private schools to layoff some personnel, in particular part-time teachers and other non-regular staff, because of budget constraints. Some of these schools are even at risk of closure.
Despite the exodus of students, many parents are wondering why certain private schools choose to maintain their costly tuition and are not significantly dropping their rates, to ease the financial plight of families and encourage them to keep their children where they are.
Even President Duterte has asked Secretary Briones in a nationwide televised briefing why there has been only a “small drop” in tuition despite the shift to alternative learning.
Briones said most private schools are adjusting their itemized expenses to cater to the needs of distance learning. She also noted that tuition fee increases in private schools should be approved by DepEd and should be “justified,” noting that according to law, 70 percent of tuition increases should automatically go to teachers’ salaries.
Whether the cost of “online education” in private schools (including colleges and universities) is indeed “justified” is a question many parents want answered.
They argue that remote learning schemes should cost significantly less and should be more affordable, because they are subpar in practically every aspect to face-to-face education, and because of the obvious savings on facilities, personnel and the various ancillary services provided to on-campus students.
They have asked schools for significant discounts, if not on tuition then at least on the many other arbitrary fees that can add up to thousands.
Despite delivering only online education for now, the tuition for many private schools, the elite ones in particular, remain high with various fees still attached to them, which, needless to say, have made their students and parents quite angry.
One elite private school, for instance, is still charging over P150,000 for grade school with thousands allocated for various fees, like P8,000 for a “campus development” fee, even if students will not be anywhere near the campus. There are also “IT” and “energy” fees, even if students have to provide for their own Internet connections, computers and electricity for online learning; as well as library, laboratory and gym fees, even if students cannot avail themselves of any of these facilities.
There are many other private schools still charging similar costly tuition and questionable fees. The owners of these schools might argue that sending children to their schools is a choice, which most of the parents can afford, even if a good number of parents who send their children to private schools, even the expensive ones, are middle-class parents who have to make significant financial sacrifices to be able to afford supposedly better education for their children.
Or perhaps they are counting that majority of Filipino parents are “grin-and-bear-it” types who endure their sufferings silently and will, in the end, just choose to pay whatever is asked of them, to keep their kids where they are.
But these schools should also be careful, because many cash-strapped families in this pandemic can no longer afford the same choices. Before they brag about their various charity drives, these schools should first be more charitable to their own students whose exodus is the last thing they want.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano