EDITORIAL - Quality education not included in preparations galore

Schoolyear 2010-2011 officially starts today with the opening of classes in some private schools. Public schools are not set to open until June 15. With school opening comes the usual "school opening blues."

"School opening blues" is the great national passion for going through the motions of checking everything -- from student dormitories to the roofs of classrooms, from petty thieves in the neighborhood to schoolchildren's teeth.

Yet for all this great upheaval about the usual and predictable, nobody seems to remember to check whether some palpable improvement in the quality of education is available to at least make this grand effort of educating children worthwhile.

The continuing nosedive in the quality of education is no secret to everyone. Even some of the country's supposedly premier schools have been known to now rate very poorly against other schools in the region.

And while there are indeed a lot of factors that have conspired to bring about this sad development in our national life, nothing seems to have been done to address some of the most immediate among them.

With a new administration coming, one that made a platform out of fighting corruption, the hope is high that corruption in the Department of Education gets to be among the first to be targetted for action.

The education department has long been tagged as among the most corrupt in government, with money that could have gone to improve the skills of teachers and the quality of books and other teaching materials getting diverted into the pockets of corrupt officials.

While it is all right to go through the motions of checking the usual problems that attend school openings, the greater problem with education really is how to deliver quality that is sorely needed if this country's future is to be beneficially assured.

Right now, the country has fallen to the level of Vietnam when just a few decades ago it was second only to Japan. We can never hope to regain stature and past glory if we continue to produce citizens whose basic knowledge and skills are inherently infirm.