EDITORIAL - No child left behind

A Public Assistance Command Center has been set up at the main office of the Department of Education as classes start today for elementary and high school. As part of Oplan Balik-Eskwela, the government is also monitoring the prices of school supplies and providing basic items at discounted prices.

The Philippine National Police has deployed thousands of its personnel around schools nationwide to protect students and maintain order as the school year starts. In Metro Manila, additional traffic aides have been fielded by the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority. The MMDA has also initiated a campaign to enforce the smoking ban in schools.

With all those preparations, there should be significantly fewer problems as some 28 million students troop to schools today. Education advocacy groups, however, say that while the days of holding classes in the shade of trees appear to be over, public schools continue to suffer from shortages of classrooms and school equipment. 

 Education officials have admitted that the construction of 66,000 classrooms, which they describe as a backlog accumulated from 2014 to 2018, has yet to be completed. Meanwhile, the much-delayed approval of this year’s national budget due to congressional bickering has stirred unrest among public school teachers, who are also complaining that they are being subjected to “red-tagging” by security forces.

And despite the landmark approval of free tuition all the way to college, the other expenses for formal education remain beyond the reach of impoverished Filipinos. The cost of daily transportation, school supplies even when discounted, and the numerous miscellaneous fees collected throughout the school year are a heavy burden for many families.

The Department of Social Welfare and Development is reportedly prepared to provide assistance to ease that burden, but the government has limited resources. Several states have adopted a policy of ensuring that no child is left behind in formal education, but this goal can be daunting for developing countries. Even as preparations for this year’s school opening have become much improved, leaving no child behind remains a formidable challenge.