June 2, 2000, The Philippine Star, Editorial, Ghosts in education,
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June 2, 2000, The Philippine Star, Editorial, Ghosts in education,
Classes will open this Monday with the usual problems across the country: lack
of school buildings, classrooms, teachers, school supplies. In areas of
conflict in Mindanao, classes may have to be postponed indefinitely, according
to education officials. But even without the conflict, quality education is a
problem in Mindanao, as in the rest of the country. Among the executive
departments, education gets the biggest chunk of the national budget, as
mandated by the Constitution. Yet the funding is never enough, and a tight
budget is one of the reasons often cited for the deteriorating quality of
Philippine education.
The nation must worry not only about budgetary constraints but also a
misallocation of funding. Earlier this week, a congressman disclosed that the
Department of Education, Culture and Sports could be losing close to P5 billion
a year in salary payments to non-existent or ghost public school teachers. DECS
officials may also be bloating enrollment figures, the congressman said.
Think of what P5 billion can do in a cash-strapped education system. It can
build classrooms, hire qualified teachers, produce quality textbooks. The
quality of Philippine education has deteriorated so much that Filipinos are
losing their competitive edge in the labor market. In the global information
economy, providing world-class education is crucial for a nation's survival.
Yet whatever improvements have been made in the education system in recent
years have hardly been felt. The failure of the system is manifested in the
quality of graduates churned out by many professional schools. A distressingly
high percentage of these graduates never pass their professions' licensure
examinations.
Many of these schools are private institutions, but supervising them is also
the job of the government. How can education agencies do their job properly
when they are squandering public funds on non-existent personnel? The
government must look closely at this problem and make sure precious funds for
education are utilized judiciously. Whether it's corruption or plain
incompetence, the existence of "ghost" teachers does not bode well for the
state of Philippine education.
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