Gov’t paid P31B to private schools to take in students

THE GOVERNMENT has paid P31 billion over the past six years to private schools that took in thousands of students who could not be accommodated in public schools, a recent study showed.

With the full implementation of the Department of Education’s (DepEd) senior high school program next year and the rise of low-fee private schools, Canadian researcher Curtis Riep expressed concern that the government, through its voucher program, would pour more money into the private sector that could otherwise be used to build more public school buildings and address the country’s perennial classroom backlogs.

Currently, poor but deserving students get to enroll in private schools through the DepEd’s Education Service Contracting (ESC) program which is the main component of the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (Gastpe) law that was passed in 1989. Under the ESC, the government subsidizes a student’s tuition in a private school by as much as P10,000 for every school year.

Gov’t beneficiaries

Riep’s research—funded by Education International, a worldwide organization of teachers in 170 countries, and conducted between May and June—found that last year around 800,000 students, or almost 60 percent of the 1.3 million private high school students, were beneficiaries of the government’s educational financial aid.

Under this setup, not only is the government able to decongest public schools, but it is also able to send students to school at a fraction of the cost, since parents pay the balance of the child’s school fees, Riep noted.

But Riep said this setup weakened the public school system further. “A lack of political will to finance public education sufficiently in the Philippines has culminated in an overburdened system unable to accommodate all students effectively,” Riep said in his 49-page research.

‘Bad’ investment

Riep said the government’s method of subsidizing students’ education in private schools instead of investing in public education is “bad because we should not be investing and filling the pockets of private corporations especially when talking about a societal good such as education.”

He added that this situation allowed for the “corporate sector solution put in place by Affordable Private Education Centers (APEC) that aims to supply affordable private education to large numbers of economically disadvantaged Filipino students who are willing to pay for basic education.”

Curtis warned that the rise of low-fee private schools such as APEC—a joint venture between Ayala Corp. and UK’s Pearson—would “undermine the right to free and quality education” unless it is “properly regulated by the government in order to safeguard education as a human right and a common good.” He added that since APEC’s tuition is only at P24,850, it is an attractive option, especially to those who will qualify for the DepEd’s voucher program that doles out as much as P22,500.