The school year 2020-2021 is extraordinary. Instruction for the Covid generation will be conducted under new teaching formats using new education technologies and tools. Hence, the education vocabulary now carries terms such as distance education, flexible learning, blended learning, online teaching, e-learning, and so on. Instead of chalks, blackboards and notebooks, students are being asked to be ready with their computers and tablets. But for those who cannot afford such gadgets, they are told not to worry because they can still get instruction via their family television and radio sets.
It is a brave new education world. We can only sympathize with the leaderships of Department of Education (DepEd) and Commission on Higher Education in their courageous efforts to push for the opening of classes this August amid a pandemic and the limited time to prepare the teachers, the host communities/local government units and the country as a whole to the new education setting. Their uniform battlecry: learning must continue.
However, making learning continuous under Covid circumstances, difficult as it is, is not the only policy issue facing the education planners. There are other equally important concerns, foremost of which is the inclusionary/exclusionary impact of the instruction and curricular adjustments being made or adopted in response to Covid-19.
In a webinar conducted by the Freedom from Debt Coalition, Raquel Castillo of the Sustainable Partnership through Education and Lifelong Learning (SPELL) and Student Regent Ellenor Bartolome of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines pointed out that, education, a great equalizer, has the potentials of becoming a great social and economic divider under the pandemic.
Historically, the poor’s lack of access to education was at the roots of social and economic inequality in the country. This was the situation during the Spanish and American colonial periods.
When the country gained political independence, access became a question of affordability. Children of poor families accounted for the high drop-out rates in the public elementary and secondary schools. And from the fraction of those who were able to finish high school, only a handful were able to continue to college, validating the observation that education was a preserve for the rich. Thus, the popular demand articulated by social reformers through the decades: “universalization” of education captured in the slogans “education is a right” and “education for all” (EFA).
After Edsa I in 1986, the EFA demand got enshrined in the Constitution. The then Department of Education, Culture and Sports formally embraced the EFA goal, prodding a succession of governments to allocate more and more funds for the public schools. Later, subsidies for those enrolled in private schools were also developed via the voucher system.
And then the World Bank came up with an “education inclusion” package: conditional cash transfer. Poor families with three school-age children can receive a maximum of P1,400 a month allowance based on two CCT conditions: the mothers must have regular check-ups in the health clinics and the children must attend schooling without fail.
Thus, by 2019, total K-12 enrolment had swelled to over 27 million, a mind-boggling number representing one-fourth of the total Philippine population. Enrolment at the tertiary level had also risen to over three million. Clearly, education, especially at K-12 level, had become more and more accessible except for the very poor who are “invisible” to the barangay/LGU officials and who have no permanent address such as those living along the pavements, in cemeteries and isolated upland areas.
Now with Covid-19, a major reversal in the education universalization campaign is happening. Latest reports indicate that almost 80 percent of the K-12 students (around 7 million) are dropping out. The No. 1 reason is well-known: families impoverished by Covid-19 cannot afford the expenses
involved in enrolling children, especially the purchase of electronic gadgets and getting Internet connectivity under the various e-learning schemes.
There are other economic reasons. In the old studies on the school drop-out phenomenon, the most frequent answers given by parents on why their children had to stop schooling was the lack of funds for school materials (uniform, books, pencils, etc.) and the need to have extra hands in the conduct of family business such as farming, street vending and home-based production. This time the economic situation is terribly acute; hence, the precipitous drop in enrolment.
However, the exclusionary process does not end in the non-enrolment of the 20 percent. Dr. Ciel Habito called our attention to a recent study by Cymon Kayle Lubangco, a masteral student of Ateneo, on the implications in the adoption of the new teaching instruments or modalities being espoused by DepEd for the K-12 learners. Her study shows that households in the Philippines with “schooling members” numbered around 15.8 million in 2015. Out of this total, only 9.7 percent of the families have Internet connection and only 25 percent have computers. Thus, immediately, large areas of the country are excluded in the learning process if the preferred method is to go digital.
As to radio, television and cellphone cited by DepEd as alternative means for the delivery of instruction, the Lubangco study gave higher percentages—40, 79 and 89, respectively. However, the quality of instruction or learning delivered through radio, television and cellphone certainly cannot match that of the Internet/computer-based education which involves a virtual “face-to-face” interaction as if one is in a classroom.
Raquel Castillo of SPELL and Regent Ellenor Bartolome of PUP cited other problems. One the tendency of the education planners to focus primarily on the formal side of education and the economy. This explains the overwhelming focus on going digital. The situation of learners belonging to families residing in poor communities and who cannot afford to buy the electronic gadgets tends to be ignored. Castillo has also observed that the “alternative learning system” has seen limited growth in enrolment and has not received sufficient attention, budget- and administration-wise, from the education planners. ALS is a special education program that targets the out-of-school youth, former rebels, displaced workers and disabled.
Relatedly, the education planners seem to be continuing with the old education theme advanced by the previous Administrations—aligning the Philippine education system with the global and regional standards on education in terms of schedules (hence, the changes in academic calendar), quality and qualifications. The Philippines subscribes to the Asean Qualifications Reference Framework, which the Asean liberalizers see as a means to ease the “free flow” of skills and talents region-wide. Global aligners claim that upgrading the educational system to be at par with other countries in the region and in the world make the Philippines globally competitive.
However, Castillo and Bartolome ask: should we not focus our attention first on the needs of the country, especially the poor segments of society, given the social and economic realities under the pandemic? And with the flattening of the global and Asean/East Asian economy, why not focus first on the domestic social and economic needs of the country?
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