by JAILEEN F. JIMENO

In faraway Maguindanao and nearby Las Piñas, more children are failing to enroll and stay in school, and the ratio of students to teachers, classrooms and books is getting worse. These problems gain more urgency as schools start preparing for the opening of the new schoolyear in the next fortnight.

A TOWN IN MAGUINDANAO — Ten-year-old Dino and two younger boys were harassing a hapless chicken under a neighbor’s nipa house. Covered with dust, the boys obviously hadn’t had a bath just yet that day, and had chosen to go after the chicken while other children in this village trooped to a nearby river to soak and to play.

	IN Maguindanao, children are often not in school because there are more class suspensions than actual sessions. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

It looked like a typical village scene — only that it was the middle of a school day and Dino (not his real name) and many of the children should have been in class. But the classrooms in Dino’s school were shuttered because its four teachers were attending a meeting in the capital.

In fact, they had been away — supposedly for meetings — for two weeks already, and no one was sure when they would be returning. Residents here also said the primary school had had more class suspensions than actual sessions, which made the children quite happy, but had their parents upset.

A mother of three whose children go to the same school as Dino’s said she and other parents had repeatedly pleaded with local education officials to appoint more teachers. “We complained because classes are rarely held,” said the parent, who like several interviewees here requested anonymity for herself and this town. “They told us to go to the district office ourselves and request for regular teachers.”

Achieving universal primary education is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that the Philippines has committed itself to achieve by 2015. In its midterm progress report on the MDGs that was released last year, however, the government conceded that this was one of the goals it was unlikely to meet seven years from now.

	NEXT PART 2 looks at how Las Piñas in Metro Manila is struggling to keep children in school despite a severe shortage of teachers and classrooms.

FLOUNDERING GOALS
Since the Arroyo administration came to power in 2001, all key performance indicators in education in fact have floundered. The percentage of schoolchildren who reach up to grade six, for instance, is down from a high of 75.9 percent in 2001 to 69.9 percent in 2006. Elementary dropout rate in 2001 was 5.75 percent, but went up to 7.36 in 2006. Those who repeat a grade is also up, from 1.95 percent in 2001 to 2.89 percent in 2006.

	Location map of Maguindanao courtesy of Wikipedia

It’s not hard to see what led to these numbers, especially in this province that is about 1,000 kilometers south of Manila. Then again, Maguindanao is not the only place in the Philippines suffering from chronic lack of teachers, which in turn is only one of the many problems bedeviling schools here and elsewhere in the country, including those in prosperous urban areas. In large part, these problems can be traced to two main factors: a decline in per capita spending for education and a booming population.

Per capita spending for education in 1996 was pegged at P1,108. In 2006, it was merely P1,014. The figure was even lower in 2005, at P975. In the last decade, the highest per capita spending for education was P1,337, and that was back in 1998. All these were even as the country’s population continued to climb, ensuring a deluge of students for decades.

But here in Maguindanao, the situation is made worse by bursts of armed conflict that keep students and their teachers away from schools for days on end, as well as by apparently skewed local priorities. As a result, the Philippine Human Development Report of 2005 says only 39.7 percent of adults in Maguindanao have six years of basic education, compared to the national average of 84 percent. The literacy rate in Maguindanao is 66.27, compared to the national average of 92.3. In 1994, the Philippines' literacy rate was recorded at 93.9 percent.

WRONG FIGURES
Maguindanao is one of the eight provinces belonging to the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Official statistics show that more than half of the region’s estimated three million people live in extreme poverty.

The National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) estimated in 2003 that poverty incidence in Maguindanao was at 60.4 percent. This makes many of the province’s half a million people the target beneficiaries of MDG No. 1, which aims to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger.

Provincial administrator Norie Unas, however, has begged to disagree with the NSCB’s 2003 figure. “We have castigated the NSO (National Statistics Office, which did the survey) for that,” he told PCIJ late last year.

He said ARMM’s Regional Planning and Development Office has a lot of socio-economic indicators “that prove the releases of the NSO are wrong.” He did not go into specifics, but made it a point to stress that he was told by NSO that “the bases of lining up Maguindanao among the poorest of the provinces (were) data prior to the administration of Governor (Andal) Ampatuan.”

Ampatuan began his term in 2001. He was reelected in 2004, and another win in 2007 now has him serving his third and last term. Since the PCIJ interviewed Unas, the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) has released fresh figures that show the poverty incidence in Maguindanao shooting up to 62 percent in 2006, a steep rise from 41.6 percent in 1997. The province is now the third poorest in the country, coming after Tawi-Tawi and Zamboanga del Norte.

In any case, Unas may find it hard to argue with development experts who say education is crucial in fighting poverty. University of the Philippines College of Education Dean Vivien Talisayon says, “education levels the playing field.”