OVER two million school-age children, or almost 10 percent between the ages of five and 15, are not going to school. The new school year opened yesterday.
“While over 23 million children will be trooping to schools at kindergarten, elementary, and secondary levels, around 2.3 million children will be left behind, deprived of their fundamental right to education,” disclosed Rep. Antonio Tinio of Act Teachers.
Based on enrolment figures provided by the Department of Education, Tinio noted that around 570 thousand 5 year olds would not be able to enroll in kindergarten; over 838 thousand in elementary, and over 1.1 million in high school.
“These appalling numbers point to the failure of the Aquino administration to fulfill its basic constitutional mandate to provide basic education to all Filipinos. They indicate that the vaunted interventions in so-called poverty alleviation, such as the multi-billion peso conditional cash transfer program have not been effective in enabling the poorest families to send their children to school,” said Tinio, noting that the children most likely to be out of school come from the poorest families in the poorest and most underdeveloped areas in the country. “President Aquino and the Department of Education cannot claim success in any so-called education reforms for as long as one child in ten is not able to go to school.”
Tinio reiterated his call for the suspension of the K to 12 program. “How can the Aquino administration claim that it’s ready for K to 12 when it can’t even provide basic access to schools to millions of children?”
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