Education for All by 2015, Will we make it?

As published in the Opinion section, Page A13, Philippine Daily Inquirer, 5 April 2008
UNESCO, through its Education for All initiative, posed questions in its Global Monitoring Report on the challenges facing efforts to achieve its target for 2015. The report, aptly titled “Education for All by 2015, Will We Make It?” shows developments in a global scale and cites highlights in each region, in our case, East Asia.
The question that we should ask ourselves is this, “Are we there yet?” EFA [Education for All] has six areas of concern: early childhood care and education, universal primary education, learning needs of young people and adults, adult literacy, gender equality and quality of education. According to the report, the Philippines—along with Cambodia, Guatemala, India and Nicaragua—has notably increased access to pre-primary education. The Adopt-A-School policy has been credited as a contributor to this positive development; incentives are provided to organizations that support this policy. The areas that still need improvement include quality of education, teacher-student ratios, gender equality and adult literacy.
Many organizations focus their efforts on the primary level: Sa Aklat Sisikat Foundation focuses its reading program on Grade 4 students. Union Bank of the Philippines addresses the needs of Grade 2 and 3 students in reading and values formation. The Bright Minds Read program of Ronald McDonald House Charities focuses on Grade 1 students. Petron Foundation’s Tulong Aral, which provides scholarships and meal allowances to Grade 1-6 students, recently had its first batch of graduates; under this very successful program, which was started six years ago, 1,000 students were able to graduate. Gawad Kalinga’s Sibol schools focus on the needs of preschool children in our marginalized sectors. Bato Balani Foundation has partnered with many of these organizations and provides educational materials and training for teachers and librarians, with focus on the primary and secondary level. Other organizations have also begun to set aside funds to enhance the quality of Math and Science education in both the primary and secondary level. There are many more organizations that deserve credit; many of them are corporate foundations which donate up to P1 billion annually to the cause of quality education.
If we take a look at the National Achievement Tests for Grade 6, its results in school year 2005-2006 show an overall Mean Percentage Score (MPS) of 54.5 percent, a decline from the previous year of 58.7 percent. But in school year 2006-2007, the overall MPS rose to 59.94 percent. As to the national ranking, the top 10—out of 186 participating provinces and cities in all regions—were: (in order) Southern Leyte, Ormoc City, Batangas, Digos City, Balanga City, Romblon, Maasin City, Eastern Samar, Calapan City, Siargao. In the National Capital Region, the Makati recorded the highest MPS (37th in the national ranking), while Quezon City got the lowest (146th in the national ranking). Sulu ranked 186th nationally.
The performance of the different provinces and cities indicate that collaboration between and among schools, communities and local government units is effective. EFA has recognized the distinct role and contribution of civil society in pushing for reforms and in providing aid and support for education. But education reform can be made more effective if we establish systems and processes for multi-sector collaboration with the local government as the “lead arm.”
Therefore, politicizing education reform makes a lot of sense. There are many initiatives and programs seen to be effective in improving the quality of education—all with very valid and laudable objectives; and the Department of Education has taken initiatives—most recently with the Education Summit—to bring together all sectors and get inputs for reform. Unfortunately, policy statements only end up just that—as policy statements. Cascading the implementation process down to the lowest level in the educational hierarchy needs to be seen and the local governments need to take a larger role in education reform.
As we move closer to the national elections in 2010, education stakeholders in the public and private sectors must begin to consider mobilizing campaigns pushing for education as a priority and critical agenda in political platforms. The voting public, most particularly the youth, must make the education agenda a major criterion for supporting political parties and individuals in both the national and local levels. We must make sure that political statements made on education during the election campaign are backed by solid data and speak of doable programs that can effect change in the education system; in other words, they must not remain as statements.
As the Foundation for Worldwide People Power puts it, we need an Education Revolution.
With proper policies, strong and consistent leadership in education, and the support of local governments and collaboration with the community and civil society, we might actually make some if not all the targets for EFA in 2015.

Natalie Christine “Ching” Jorge is the VP/Director for Programs and Research of the Bato Balani Foundation Inc. Jorge is also the lead convenor for the Young Public Servants (YPS-InciteGov) and chair of the Research committee of the League of Corporate Foundations (LCF). For comments/inquiries email:chingjorge@gmail.com or bbfi@diwamail.com,www.batobalani.wordpress.com, www.yps.org.ph.