Vizcaya barangay leaders act to cure dole ‘failures’

SOLANO, NUEVA VIZCAYA—Officials of this province’s 275 villages are pushing for the formation of school boards at the barangay (village) level, in what they said was an attempt to address problems left unsolved by the government’s Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps).

Eduardo Tiongson, Nueva Vizcaya chapter president of the Barangay Councilors’ League of the Philippines (BCLP), said that despite its good intentions, the 4Ps has not fully addressed the problem of reducing the number of dropouts and out-of-school youths at the grassroots.

“With the creation of the barangay school boards, we will now take the problem of education by the horns, realizing that this cannot be solved by simply giving doles to parents with children of school age,” he said.

The program, he said, seeks to transform their communities “from one that relegates the education of children entirely to the Department of Education to one that takes ownership and responsibility for their education.”

Cash assistance

“[The 4Ps] has been meant to keep students in school by giving parents cash assistance. Studies have shown, however, that in many instances, this has failed,” he said.

The 4Ps provides poor households P500 in monthly stipend and up to P900 additional allowances for the family’s first three children who are in school. These are released on condition that the children attend classes regularly and undergo regular medical examination in the nearest government health center.

Tiongson cited cases in which students used the money from the government to stay in computer shops, or parents used their money as capital for a failing business or for gambling, instead of giving it to their children to encourage them to go to school.

On Wednesday, the BCLP chapter here finished the first of a series of trainings meant to help the more than 3,000 village officials of the province enact an ordinance that will establish village-based school boards.

“We hope that a barangay-based school board will encourage our constituents to take more active participation in determining the needs of our community on education,” said Doretea Guillermo, chair of Curifang village here.

A recent survey by the Synergia Foundation showed that only 85 percent of school-age children in Nueva Vizcaya are in school. Of this number, only 70 percent reach the sixth grade, lower than the 76.4 percent recorded in 2008. Melvin Gascon, Inquirer Northern Luzon