Students to greet Day 1 of classes with protests

MILITANT student groups are set to stage nationwide protests against the government’s K-to-12 program, and the poor state of education in the country in time for the first day of classes today.

“President Noynoy Aquino and Department of Education Secretary Armin Luistro are hallucinating, thinking that they are ready for the K-to-12 program… They can casually utter deceitful and illogical statements to defend the anti-people K-12,” said League of Filipino Students (LFS) national spokesperson Charisse Bañez.

Bañez said the Aquino government is “hell-bent” on implementing K-12, seen to be a burden to millions of poor Filipino families, adding that the program “falsely promises jobs and good-quality education.”

Bañez said said a senior high school student in a public school would need P100,000 to cover expenses for the additional two years in high school while a student in a private senior high would need at least twice the amount.

“No matter what the government says, this is the undeniable truth: under K-12, Filipino families won’t be able to afford even a high school education. This is especially true since the wages of our parents remain low and in the face of rising costs of basic commodities, electricity and water, among many others,” Bañez said.

Citing data from the Family Income and Expenditure Survey (FIES), Bañez noted that additional expenses under K-12 would take most of the annual income of Filipino families which averages at P235,000. The youth leader said that it would  be worse for the poorest decile that only has an average annual income of P69,000.

“A haciendero president like Aquino definitely won’t understand. At present, 50.6% of out-of-school youths do not have money for education. If anything, K-12 will result to an exponential increase in drop outs and out-of-school youth. Walang pangarap na maaabot sa K-12,” Bañez said.

Bañez stressed that quality education and mastery of subjects do not come hand-in-hand with a longer education cycle.

“We cannot expect Filipino students to be experts on different fields of study if they do not have an environment conducive for learning in the first place. Even without K-12, the government’s budget allocation for education cannot even cover existing shortages in classrooms, teachers, chairs, textbooks, sanitation and water facilities, and other basic needs,” Bañez said. “So long as these shortages remain, it will not matter how many years we add to our education cycle. If these will not be addressed, then the quality of Philippine education will remain poor.”

Banez said shortages in classrooms remain at 209,539, 60 million for textbooks, and 2.5 million for sanitation and water facilities. She said the country needs 114,304 teachers for a teacher-student ratio of 1:30.