MANILA, Philippines?Access to basic education among the country?s children is bound to get worse with household incomes shrinking amid surging oil and food prices, former President Fidel Ramos said Tuesday.

On the sidelines of an international media conference in Manila, Ramos said the drop in primary and secondary school enrollment cited by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB) did not take into account the current economic crunch.

According to the NSCB report released over the weekend, the percentage of children enrolled in primary school dropped to 83 percent in the last schoolyear from 90 percent five years ago. The high school enrollment rate has been fixed at 59 percent for the last five years, the agency reported.

?The figures shown by the NSCB did not yet input the oil and food crisis. And these statistics are maybe six months late in catching up. So it?s going to be worse,? Ramos said.

He said the increase in population and other factors could make the picture even grimmer.

?We?re talking here of access to facilities?teachers, classrooms, schoolbooks, computers. That has been exacerbated by the oil and food crisis which is happening around the world,? he said in an interview after his keynote speech at the 17th Annual Asian Media Information and Communication Center conference.

The NSCB said that the country?s failure to send more of its children to school had derailed the Arroyo administration?s target under the Millennium Development Goals that all Filipino children will have access to education by 2015.

Augusto Santos, director general of the National Economic and Development Authority, earlier said the rise in the number of out-of-school youths was a result of rising prices of goods and services.

He said that although public schools, which account for some 17 million of the 20 million student population, offer free tuition, some families still could not afford to send their children to school because of other necessary expenses, including transportation, food, books and other materials.

Future in jeopardy

In a statement Tuesday, Sen. Manuel Roxas II warned that the increasing number of children deprived of education placed the country?s ?competitiveness and long-term future in jeopardy.?

?If we want to improve our youth?s education outcomes and give them a better chance to progress, we can?t be in a business as usual mode anymore,? he said.

Education Secretary Jesli Lapus said Monday that his department was well aware of the problem and was focusing on pre-school and nutrition assistance programs to prepare and keep children in school.

Population policy criticized

Ramos also reiterated his criticism of the Arroyo administration?s population policy, calling it yet again deferential to the Roman Catholic Church.

?As I?ve said very clearly, the population policy of this government is flip-flopping because of the undue subservience of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to the Catholic bishops,? Ramos said.

Instead of toeing the Church?s line, Ramos believed the national population policy should be pro-choice, where couples could decide on the number of their children based on their capacity to raise them.

Other Catholic countries

?They (Church leaders) seem to equate natural or artificial means of family planning as pro-abortion, which is completely wrong with due respect to all of them. Because what we are really trying to protect is the quality of life of the Filipino family and of the entire bigger Filipino family of 89 million since that must be necessarily moderated in terms of number,? he said.

Such reality poses urgency as the Philippine population, with all the Church-bred reservations on birth control, has been rising 2.3 percent per year, twice that of the world average. He cited a United Nations study citing population growth in Catholic countries at less than 1 percent.

?So why is that? Well, it?s just that the Catholic populations in the likes of Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Austria, Ireland, Mexico are smarter than the Catholics in the Philippines because they listen to themselves. The couples make up their own minds about the quality and therefore the family that they would like to have,? Ramos said.

?They don?t have to be guided by priests and bishops,? he added.

Quality of life

When he was the President, Ramos implemented a pro-choice population policy compliant with international commitments at managing population increase.

?Population must be on the basis of the exercise of the freedom of conscience of the couple in regard to the quality of life they want for their family. So the quality is what determines the quantity, in the choice to be made by the couple. They must not be dictated upon by any outside influences,? he said.