Invest in education

We celebrated the 114th anniversary of Philippine independence yesterday amid the implementation of K to 12, the centerpiece of President Aquino’s  education agenda.

The program features two more years of high school for Filipino students to put  education at par with world standards.

Parents who winced at the prospect of spending more in tuition could not stop K to 12.

Neither could critics who said the program is a scheme to reduce schools to cheap labor mills, nor academicians who said that few people were consulted prior to program enforcement.

The Department of Education (DepEd) under Secretary Armin Luistro assuaged the public:

Parents’ spending for a child’s   two senior high years would be equivalent to spending for their first two college years.

If the kids,  who will be employable by the end of high school, qualify to apply for  college, they can work and use their earnings to help pay for  higher education.

Students will spend fewer hours in the classroom and have more more time to absorb, process and retain knowledge under K to 12.

The DepEd envisions graduates of K to 12  to  help the nation as “productive, responsible citizens equipped with the essential competencies and skills for both life-long learning and employment.”

According to the United Nations’ 2011 Human Development Report, countries that offer more years in  basic education are more likely to lead in progress. In the top 10 most developed countries led by Norway, citizens are expected to spend  15 to 18 years of their lives  in school.

Now that the Philippines has raised the number of school years, leaders should put the people’s money where their vision is.

At the launch of K to 12 last April, President Aquino boasted about the P238.8 billion allotted by the government to fund the education sector this year.  The amount is not  even 2 percent of the country’s trillion-peso 2012 budget.

The Philippines holds the 138th spot in the Central Intelligence Agency’s ranking of 163 countries based on education spending.  Guess who topped the heap? Neighbor  Timor-Leste, which allocated 16.8 percent of its gross domestic product to education as of 2009.

To help K to 12 succeed, the  government must  earmark for education at least 6 percent of our gross national product.

Six percent,  according to a United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) study, is learning’s just portion of a developing country’s budget.

If  we believe  quality of life in the nation depends largely on the quality of learning that we bequeath our children, this should be an investment easily made and firmly committed.