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Saturday, June 04, 2005
Roperos: Challenge to education
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
Parental aspirations for quality education for the young ones have become more acute these days, as a college diploma has ceased to be a sure source of livelihood. It is even more so if one is a mere high school graduate.
In fact, graduating from college today is no assurance of immediate employment. There are those who graduated two or three years earlier who have not been employed just yet.
The problem is that at the moment the quality of tertiary level graduates from our schools, whether private or public, are below the acceptable level for employment. Thus, there are thousands of unemployed graduates among the more than four million Filipinos out of work.
This situation presents a tough challenge to education in the country.
Not long ago, many private schools were accused of being diploma mills, shamefully churning out half-baked graduates.
This year, the number of elementary school enrollees is placed at 13 million out of the estimated 22 million Filipinos of school age. Which means that the burden of educating our people has grown tremendously heavy as our population grew from a mere 72 million over a decade ago to the present estimated 84 million.
At the present rate of growth, our population is expected to go beyond 100 million in five years. I hope our national leaders would lbe less concerned about politics by then.
Anyway, there is need to improve the quality of education. And I think Education Secretary Florencio Abad is doing just that. He has, for example, imposed stringent screening on the young primary level beginners.
But what about those unable to pass the “entrance test”? Or, isn’t it unfair to impose a test on grade one pupils, knowing that there are really slow starters at that age level?
What is important is that every child is extended all opportunities to learn to read and write. Is the test intended to classify the children according to their ability to learn, or one that would eliminate those they believe could never excel?
In any case, why don’t Abad open the gates of the first grade to all comers and, during the year, carefully classify their cognitive ability and other acquired or learned skills using learning modules? This would eliminate the tedious and time-consuming process of enrolment being done now.
The pursuit of quality in education is never more apparent than in the University of the Philippines. Last year, some 64,000 high school graduates from all over the country applied for admission to UP Diliman, but only about 11,000 passed the admission test or UPCAT.
At any rate, while it may be true that a good number of students seeking admission to the tertiary level fail to do so, still a big percentage of high school graduates never have the opportunity to enter college. And those that have started college work often become dropouts due to various causes, but mostly for economic reasons.
A survey conducted last year by the Unesco called the Wallace Report showed that the dropout rate was said to have hit “a staggering all-time high of 73 percent.”
In a democracy, a nation’s development and growth is closely tied with the level of literacy of its people. The higher the quality of education its citizenry enjoys, the more progressive the country becomes.
(June 4, 2005 issue)
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