Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are eight goals that all 191 UN member states
have agreed to try to achieve by the year 2015. The United Nations Millennium Declaration, signed in
September 2000 commits world leaders to combat poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy, environmental
degradation, and discrimination against women. The MDGs are derived from this Declaration, and all
have specific targets and indicators.

The Eight Millennium Development Goals are:

GOAL 2:
ACHIEVE UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION
Target 2.A:
Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete
a full course of primary schooling

1. to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger;

2. to achieve universal primary education;
3. to promote gender equality and empower women;
4. to reduce child mortality;
5. to improve maternal health;
6. to combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases;
7. to ensure environmental sustainability; and
8. to develop a global partnership for development.

In September 2015, the General Assembly adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development that
includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Building on the principle of “leaving no one behind”,
the new Agenda emphasizes a holistic approach to achieving sustainable development for all.

Goal 4: Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote

lifelong learning opportunities for all

Aside from the numbers presented above, which are impressive, there is also a
need to look closely and resolve the following important issues: 1) quality of
 education 2) affordability of education 3) goverment budget for education;
and 4) education mismatch.
1. Quality - There was a decline in the quality of the Philippine education,
especially at the elementary and secondary levels. For example, the results of
standard tests conducted among elementary and high school students, as well
as in the National College of Entrance Examination for college students, were
way below the target mean score.
2. Affordability - There is also a big disparity in educational achievements
across social groups. For example, the socioeconomically disadvantaged
students have higher dropout rates, especially in the elementary level. And
most of the freshmen students at the tertiary level come from relatively well-
off families.
3. Budget - The Philippine Constitution has mandated the goverment to allocate
the highest proportion of its budget to education. However, the Philippines still
has one of the lowest budget allocations to education among
the ASEAN countries.
4. Mismatch - There is a large proportion of "mismatch" between training and
actual jobs. This is the major problem at the tertiary level and it is also the
cause of the existence of a large group of educated unemployed or
underemployed.

Across the years our educational system has been rocked by controversies which have
remained unabated up to this day. Amidst the welter of issues, two of them have
managed to stand out in importance: quality and relevance. The major difficulty in
education in the Philippines is the short-sighted policy of sacrificing the quality and
quantity of education for reasons of economy.

The key issues and problems in Philippine education which need further debate
and depth analysis as well as immediate resolution include the following:

1. Deteriorating quality of education

It is uncommon to hear college teachers decry the quality of students that come
to them. They lament the students’ inability to construct a correct sentence,
much less a paragraph. Private schools have been assailed as profit-making
institutions turning out half-baked graduates who later become part of the
nation’s educated unemployed. All these are indications of the poor quality of
education.

There are multiple factors which have led to low educational standards. Studies
and fact-finding commissions have shown that the deteriorating quality of
education is due to the low government budget for education; poor quality of
teachers; poor management of schools; poor school facilities such as laboratory
and library facilities; poor learning environment; the content of the curriculum;
inadequate books and science equipment; the poor method of instruction;
shortages of classrooms; and others.

2. Colonial, feudal, imperial, commercial, and elitist orientation in Philippine education

A rather sweeping indictment is that the Philippine educational system has been
and still is basically American in orientation and objectives. Even now, despite
years of independence, our educational system has not succeeded in
eliminating the chronic colonial mentality which abounds like a mental blight
within or without the academe. At present, quality education is financial-capacity
based, making higher education more of a privilege rather than a right.

3. Shortage of school buildings, textbooks and equipment

Since 1960, elementary enrolment has been expanding at the rapid rate of 4%
a year owing to increase in the number of children and in the enrolment ratio.

The shortages of classrooms and textbooks are particularly severe. The

nationwide classroom shortage is estimated to be 40,000 and the DECS (now
DepEd) operates two shifts in many schools. The textbook problem is even
more serious. A survey done in preparation for a World Bank education loan
found that the pupil-textbook ration in the public elementary schools is 10:1 and
79% of the textbooks are more than 5 years old. This situation has persisted for
many years.

Other teaching tools, such as science materials, teaching devices and audio-
visual aids, are also in short supply. Perennial graft and corruption in the
acquisition of books and in the construction of school buildings has often been
reported. This situation handicaps the teaching staff in their work.

4. Overworked and underpaid teaching staff

Teaching has often been referred to as the “most notable of all professions.” To
many teachers, however, the noble image of their profession has been
transformed into an illusion. Over the last three decades, we have come to think
of the Filipino teachers as overworked and underpaid professionals.

The fact that teachers are paid subsistence wages is only half of their sad story.
Their daily bout with dilapidated classrooms, overcrowded classes, and lack of
teaching materials, among others, make the teachers hardly rewarded work
even more difficult.

Aside from classroom instructions, teachers perform a host of backbreaking and

time-consuming jobs unrelated to the teaching function. The National Research
and Development Center for Teacher Education under the DECS listed 76
extracurricular activities performed by public school teachers. Such activities
include Operation Timbang, census taking, tax consciousness drive, Clean and
Green Drive, Alay-Tanim, Alay-Lakad, fund raising campaigns, lining the
streets to welcome foreign dignitaries, etc. To do all these, teachers are forced
to work two or three hours overtime everyday. They also have to report during
weekends and holidays and even during their yearly vacation time.

5. Bilingual policy and the problem of a national language

The bilingual policy in education aims to develop a Filipino who is proficient in

both English and Filipino. For the past 20 years, since the DECS adopted the
bilingual policy, Tagalog-based Pilipino has been used to teach over half of the
subjects in the elementary and secondary curriculum of both public and private
schools. Mathematics and the natural sciences continue to be taught in English.
Despite the findings of the Ateneo Social Weather Survey that 92% of Filipinos
already speak and understand Tagalog, many provinces north and south of
Metro Manila still encounter problems with the language. This is unfortunate
because Pilipino is used in nationally conducted exams and tests. While the
bilingual policy is a law which not even the Secretary of Education can change,
it has become a growing concern that many students are deficient in
communication skills.

6. Mismatch

The major problem of the tertiary level is the large proportion of the so called
“mismatch” between training and actual jobs, as well as the existence of a large
group of educated unemployed or underemployed. The literature points out that
this could be the result of a rational response to a dual labor market where one
sector is import-substituting and highly-protected with low wages. Graduates
may choose to “wait it out” until a job opportunity in the high paying sector
comes.

To address this problem, it is suggested that leaders in business and industry

should be actively involved in higher education. Furthermore, a selective
admission policy should be carried out; that is, mechanisms should be installed
to reduce enrolment in oversubscribed programs and promote enrolment in
undersubscribed ones.

7. Globalization issue in education

It is in the educational sector where the concept of globalization is further refined

and disseminated. It comes in varied forms as “global competitiveness,” “the
information highway,” “the Third Wave Theory,” “post modern society,” “the end
of history,” and “borderless economy.”
The so-called Philippines 2000 was launched by the Philippine government to
promote “global competitiveness,” Philippine Education 2000 carried it to effect
through training of more skilled workers and surplus Filipino human power for
foreign corporations to reduce their cost of production.

The Philippines, including its educational sector, is controlled by US monopoly

capital through loan politics. This task is accomplished by the IMF, the World
Bank and a consortium of transnational banks, called the Paris Club, supervised
by the WB. The structural adjustments as basis for the grants of loans, basically
require liberalization, deregulation and privatization in a recipient country.

As transplanted into the educational sector, deregulation is spelled reduced

appropriation or reduced financial assistance to public schools through so called
fiscal autonomies; privatization and liberalization is spelled commercialized
education or liberalization of governments’ supervision of private schools and
privatize state colleges and universities.

The WB-IMF and the Ford Foundation have earmarked $400M for Philippine
education. These loans financed the Educational Development Project
(EDPITAF) in 1972; the Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine
Education (PCSPE) in 1969; the Program for Decentralized Educational
Development (PRODED) in 1981-1989. As pointed out by many critics, “the
massive penetration of WB-IMF loans into the Philippine Educational System
has opened it wide to official and systematic foreign control, the perpetuation of
US and other foreign economic interest, and to maximize the efficiency of
exploiting Philippine natural resources and skilled labor.”

A number of studies and fact-finding commissions such as the Sibayan and

Gonzales Evaluation (1988), the Presidential Commission to Survey Philippine
Education (PCSPE, 1969), and the Congressional Commission on Education
(EDCOM, 1991-1992) have pointed out that the problems of Philippine
education are the problems of quality and political will.