Students urge more education reforms

Student leaders from 14 leading private schools across the country have joined the clamor for educational reforms initiated by education reform advocates in Congress, civil society and academe.

At the end of a two-day education workshop yesterday at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, the Active Youth Alliance (AYA), an association of heads of student councils in leading universities, has thrown its support to a multisectoral advocacy network promoting government-private sector partnership to modernize the country’s public school system.

Besides AYA, the Student Advocacy for Government Accountability (SAGA), an umbrella group of student leaders from 10 Metro Manila universities, has also joined the advocacy group.

Sen. Tessie Aquino-sOreta, one of the speakers of the workshop sponsored by the Rural Empowerment for Assistance and Development (READ Foundation Inc.), said that public education in the Philippines would continue to deteriorate unless the government and private sector team up to form effective partnerships to address its fundamental problems.

Oreta, who has authored some 220 education-related laws, said these problems include recurring shortages of classrooms, teachers and textbooks; insufficient training of teachers, especially in computer technology; and underperforming or dropping out of students.

"The government, burdened with budgetary constraints and other pressing problems, could not attend to these urgent concerns in the education sector alone," Oreta said.

She disclosed that the multisectoral alliance now pushing for reforms in the education sector was hatched during a forum held at the De la Salle University last month.

Other education-friendly measures that the senator is now pushing include bills establishing a national school feeding program, providing in-service training as well as tax exemption privileges and other economic incentives for teachers, and promoting non-formal education and other alternative learning systems.