Maritess Talic, a 46-year-old mother of two, said she feared her children hadn`t learned much over the past year. Ms. Talic, who works part-time as a housekeeper, said she and her husband, a construction worker, raised about 5,000 pesos, or about $100, to buy a used tablet computer to share with their children, ages 7 and 9. In order to improve the quality of basic education in the country, Vice President and Secretary of Education Sara Duterte reaffirmed her commitment to reforms within the Ministry of Education (DepED). Over the decades, education surveys and evaluations have identified the same problems. In recent years, work to reform the problematic education system has been guided and supported by several large-scale reform programmes and projects. Some of these were state-of-the-art interventions that were effective at least in a pilot or experimental setting. But unfortunately, for various reasons, they have not succeeded overall. «You won`t be able to sleep if you just think about the deadlines and the work that remains to be done,» she says. «I`m crying.» MANILA – As students around the world exchange online learning for classrooms, millions of children in the Philippines are staying home for the second year in a row due to the pandemic, fueling concerns about the worsening education crisis in a country with uneven internet access. Currently, about 72 percent of 15-year-old Filipinos perform poorly in reading, math, and science.

They ranked last in reading comprehension in 79 countries. They also ranked 78th in science and mathematics (Pisa, 2018). This means that many Filipinos cannot read or do simple calculations. Regina Tolentino, assistant secretary general of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines, which represents the editors of university journals, said the government`s attempt to turn the second year of school closures in the positive direction was «delusional.» If no mitigation measures are taken, the World Bank estimates that $10 trillion in lost income over time will be for this entire generation of students. Existing evidence shows that the cost of closing learning gaps is lower and more effective when addressed earlier, and that investment in education supports economic recovery, growth and prosperity. On Thursday, November 24, a group of education workers welcomed the Senate`s decision to divert millions of confidential funds to other elements of its approved 2023 budget. Since colonial times, the same fundamental problems have plagued Filipino education. These include high drop-out rates, poor academic performance, poor quality of teachers in a system where teachers are at the centre of the educational process, irrelevant learning materials, excessive centralization and insufficient financial resources. Where schools have been closed for a long time, such as in the Philippines, education experts have expressed concern that the pandemic has created a «lost generation» of students facing the limitations of distance learning and overwhelmed parents struggling to serve as substitute teachers of physics and literature. «[Education Minister Leonor Briones] always reminds us that in the past, when there were military sieges or volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, typhoons, floods, learning continued,» said Secretary of State for Education Diosdado San Antonio.

The Economist noted that school closures were longer, even in places where women do not work, so there was less reputation for schools to resume child care. Many children in the Philippines live with their grandparents, who take care to let them mix on the playground. When distance learning resumed this week, Education Minister Leonor Briones tried to present the e-reopening as a success. She said about 24 million children, from primary school to high school, were enrolled in school. However, she acknowledged that the enrolment figure included about two million fewer students than the previous year. Congresswoman France Castro is a member of the ACT Teachers Partylist, a political party representing the education sector. She says a complete freeze would cause more problems than it solves. «This is something beyond our capabilities — inequality in terms of the availability of learners` resources, based on the socioeconomic status of families,» San Antonio`s secretary of education said.

Poverty is also a major obstacle to education. Mobs stormed the offices of the Ministry of Social Protection and Development on Saturday to demand cash assistance for impoverished students, injuring at least 26 people trapped at the front doors. A ministerial report released in March 2021 found that 99 percent of public school students passed in the first school term of last year. However, other surveys claim that students are disadvantaged. More than 86% of the 1,299 students surveyed by the Movement for Safe, Equitable, Quality and Relevant Education said they learned less from the Ministry of Education`s take-home modules – as did 66% of those who use online learning and 74% who use a mix of online and paper-based learning. The existing literature as well as the analysis of education statistics betray the persistence of these problems and concerns, which has led leading leading educators to joke that the educational landscape has not changed since colonial times. More news about the novel coronavirus can be found here. What you need to know about coronavirus.

For more information about COVID-19, call the DOH hotline: (02) 86517800 local 1149/1150. In the coming weeks, UNICEF will continue to mobilize partners and the public to prevent this education crisis from becoming an educational disaster. The online and offline campaigns will bring together world leaders, teachers and parents around a common cause: reopening schools for face-to-face learning as soon as possible. The future of the world`s most vulnerable children is at stake. When school activities finally resumed in October 2020, the Department of Education`s solution was a mix of remote learning options: online platforms, educational TV and radio, and print modules. But social inequalities and the lack of resources at home to support these approaches have dealt a severe blow to many students and teachers. Studies have shown that positive school experiences during this transition period are a predictor of children`s future social, emotional and educational outcomes. At the same time, children who fall behind in learning in the early years often lag behind for the time they have left in school, and the gap widens over the years. The number of years of schooling a child receives also directly affects their future income. A World Bank study last year showed that about nine out of 10 children in the Philippines suffer from «learning poverty,» the inability of children as young as 10 to read and understand a simple story. Thus, the number of young people not attending school continues to increase, making it a serious problem that needs to be reviewed in order to avoid aggravated problems in the long term. In addition, 865 of the 14,435 private educational institutions (2019 data) ceased operations for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, laying off about 4,400 teachers and affecting at least 56,000 students.

Only about 24,000 public schools nationwide, or about 46 percent, have been able to start face-to-face classes five times a week starting Monday, while the rest will use a mix of face-to-face and online instruction by Nov. 2, when all public and private schools are required to bring all students back into classrooms. education officials said. «We always say our goal is a maximum of two teams, but there will be areas that will have to resort to three shifts because they are really overcrowded,» Education Department spokesman Michael Poa said Friday. Despite many concerns, education officials assured that for the resumption of classes on Monday, «all systems are working,» he said. McKinsey estimates that «by 2040, educational losses due to school closures could result in global gross domestic product (GDP) 0.9% lower than it would otherwise have been – an annual loss of $1.6 trillion.» Indeed, today`s schoolchildren, who will soon enter the workforce, do not master the basics and become less productive. A 2020 World Bank report indicates that the country also suffers from a digital divide. In 2018, about 57 percent of the estimated 23 million Filipino households did not have access to the internet. However, the government has since worked to reduce this gap.

Manila Mayor Francisco Domagoso said in an interview that the city hall distributed 130,000 tablets to schoolchildren and about 11,000 laptops to teachers last year. Even before the pandemic, the Philippines was facing an education crisis, overcrowded classrooms, poor public school infrastructure, and desperately low salaries for teachers, resulting in a teacher shortage. Vice President Sara Duterte on Sunday highlighted the importance of arts and education in developing children`s futures as she joined the Rizaleños in celebrating the Higantes festival, the festival`s first physical celebration since the Covid-19 pandemic in the Philippines more than two years ago. Data shows that primary school children in South Africa who were tested after a 22-week closure only learned about a quarter of what they were supposed to have.