Tuesday, July 13, 2010

A Situationer on Philippine Education

The Forum - Nov.-Dec. 2009 - (Vol 10 Issue 6)
A Situationer on Philippine Education
Jo. Florendo B. Lontoc


The sad state of public school teachers in the Philippines is public knowledge. The plight of a public school teacher in the country is a harsh one: ridiculously low salaries, heavy teaching and non-teaching load, crowded classrooms, a stifling bureaucracy, corruption at various levels, and the lack of opportunities for career and personal growth. Given such conditions, it is no surprise that there is an exodus of teachers even as domestic helpers and caregivers. More recently, the more attractive destination is the public school system of the US.
The brain drain in Philippine education does not involve only those in the public school system. Even high school teachers at the Ateneo de Manila University, whose compensation packages and school environment are considered competitive enough by Philippine standards, are not exempt from the lure of overseas employment, particularly from the American public school system. According to Ateneo’s student paper The Guidon (Vol. LXIII, No. 1, June 2005), five of its high school teachers and one of the Loyola School faculty members left in September 2004 to teach in Maryland, USA.
Irresistible Wages

Like many other Filipinos who choose to work abroad, grade school and high school teachers are leaving the country in droves due primarily to irresistibly higher wages elsewhere. Although the exodus is literally breaking up the Filipino family, the financial security it offers in exchange seems worth all the trouble.
Teaching professionals in private education services in Metro Manila in June 2002 received an average of P18,255 a month, according to the Department of Labor and Employment. According to The Guidon, the hiring rate of Ateneo is pegged at P16,000 a month. Senator Mar Roxas reported in June 2005 (Philippine News Agency) that in public schools, a new teacher receives P9,939 a month. Before taxes, that is. Compare these with the entry level salary of at least P159,000 in the public schools of Prince George’s County, California. Certainly, an investment of as high as $7,500 in passage and recruitment costs is small compared to the $34,090 a year to be had from the job.
According to www.theofwonline.com, when Compton District of California made teaching offers to fifty-eight teachers in Cebu in May 2001, not one turned it down. By Christmas that year, when they began arriving in Los Angeles in time for the winter cold of the sunny state, an INS agent at the airport, glancing at visas marked “Compton Unified School District,” asked: “Did you bring a bulletproof vest?” While the question was an exaggeration, the recruiters had already been briefed them about such possibility, including a film-showing of “The Substitute II” during orientation. The teachers had more than their share of difficulties: rowdy students, cramped living quarters, cultural isolation, homesickness, and of course, the cold. But they were pleasantly surprised by the overflowing school resources and very small class sizes. Most of them wanted to extend their contracts.
The Size of the Matter

Just how big is the exodus of teachers from the Philippines? According to the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration, as reported by the Bureau of Labor and Employment Statistics on its Labstat Updates (Vol. 7, No. 12, July 2003), the number of teachers who left the country every year to practice their profession abroad grew from 112 in 1992 to more than five times as many in 2002, with 586 teachers taking teaching jobs overseas. From 1992 to October 2002, 2,289 teachers were deployed abroad. Almost half (45.2 percent) went to teach in the United States; 18.2 per cent, in Saudi Arabia; and 5.9 per cent, in Brunei. In the last three years of the survey, the US alone accounted for more than half (55.5 percent) of the total deployment.
The data was confined to contract workers and did not include the number of teachers who went abroad for jobs other than teaching and those who chose to migrate permanently to other countries. Based on data by the Commission on Filipino Overseas, an agency attached to the Department of Foreign Affairs, as reported in the same issue of Labstat Updates, the number of migrants is even larger, with a total of 9,608 emigrant teachers from 1988 to 2001. Among these teachers, 7,025 migrated to the United States; 1,118 to Canada; 1,008 to Australia; and a “notable number” to Japan and Germany. Most of them were elementary education teachers (39.8 percent), followed by secondary education teachers (23.6 percent), and supervisors and principals (15 percent).
The head count of Filipino teachers based overseas does not stop there. Migrante International reports that 32,000 or twenty percent of the estimated 160,000 Filipinos working as domestics in Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Middle East were teachers or at least had some background in teaching before going abroad.
Short-Term Solutions

The statistics prove conclusively that the fields of primary and secondary education in the Philippines are suffering acutely from brain drain. However, despite a large supply, many eligible teachers are not being employed by the educational system. Data from the Department of Education show that the number of the country’s elementary and secondary teachers, both public and private, remained almost the same within a span of ten years. From 433,701 in 1991, it increased by only 71,658 to 505,359 in 2000, for a growth rate of only 1.7 percent or 7,962 newly employed teachers per year. The country’s public schools accounted for 86.5 percent of the total teacher employment in 2000.
Compare these to figures released by the Professional Regulation Commission for the same decade (1991-2000), which show that 35,238 graduates on average passed the teachers board examination annually, out of which only 7,962 were absorbed by the educational system. Furthermore, in February of this year, the DepEd released an order adopting austerity measures through the non-filling of vacant positions, although its online newsletter dated April 2005 reported a search for 10,000 new teachers.
In its search for teachers, the DepEd is of course competing with foreign institutions. According to Bulatlat.com, US school districts need to hire around 200,000 teachers each year. But because fewer and fewer Americans want the job, private recruiters plan to place at least a million foreign teachers in American classrooms by 2007. The Philippines, with a system of education patterned after the US’s and high proficiency in English, is emerging as the chief source of recruits.
With only a little over a fourth of those eligible to teach gaining employment in the Philippines, the brain drain of teachers in elementary and high schools could in fact be a catch basin for the excess supply of teachers. But to see the brain drain as a solution rather than a problem is in itself a problem.
Lack of Teachers

The truth is, the number of teachers hired each year is insufficient to address the country’s needs in primary and secondary education. The new-hires cannot keep up with the fast-rising number of students. It is especially hard on the public schools where student populations are growing, as more and more students enter into the stream, some of them transferring from private schools. Owing to bureaucratic, financial, and logistical constraints, the hiring levels of public schools cannot keep up with the need. The result is a worsening teacher to student ratio. Figures from the DepEd show that as of 1991 the national ratio was 1:33. In 2000, it was 1:35. Latest data from the department show that in public schools, the teacher to pupil ratio in the elementary level for school year 2001-2002 stood at 1:36, while the teacher to student ratio in the high school level stood at 1:39. A quick count of enrollment in 2003-2004 indicated an alarming 1:42 ratio for public high schools. Extreme cases are experienced in highly urbanized areas where the classes swell to more than 70.
Consider also that those leaving for teaching jobs abroad are generally those with better credentials. For example, recruitment in the US must meet a federal mandate for “highly qualified” licensed teachers. Teachers seeking employment abroad still compete not only among each other but also against teachers from other countries, such as India, in terms of qualifications. Thus, the Philippine educational system is losing some of its most qualified teachers.
This is especially true for high school teachers. High school teachers are required to specialize, i.e. have mastery of the subject they teach, unlike elementary education teachers who may teach all subjects. High school math subjects, for example, are ideally taught by an education graduate who majored in Math. When high school teachers leave, people with the same qualifications must take their place, and suitable replacements are not easy to find.
The country also loses the investments it made on those teachers. For example, DepEd is reported to be developing the Science and Math teaching competency of its teachers through training and scholarships. This enrichment may very well translate into better qualifications for their applications abroad. While the DepEd is also reported to be tightening its recruitment policies so that only the best qualified will enter the system (Education Post, Vol. 37, No. 3, April 16-30, 2005, www.deped.gov.ph), the bigger question is: once hired, how will the teachers be retained?
In a country where teachers in primary and secondary education are overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated—if not unemployed—working overseas, is undeniably an attractive option despite its hazards and difficulties. When the state is unable or reluctant to hire the number of teachers it needs, and when it is unable to improve school conditions in order to retain its best teachers, it is failing to fulfill its role in providing a decent future for its children.
As the brain drain escalates, the biggest losers are the Filipino children.

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