A blueprint for building the nation

Here in our island of alluring white sand beaches, towering buildings in  business centers, gated residential villages, five-star restaurants, and billionaires flying in their private jets, it’s hard to grasp some hard truths such as poverty incidence and poor quality of education.

These are just some of the ironies in this nation of 110 million. We are teeming with nature’s bounty and yet there are still a lot of people who can hardly put food on the table; we are home to some of the richest people yet the country is still so poor on many levels; Filipinos are some of the world’s best people yet the quality of education is so poor.

Social protection

Last Wednesday, I discussed the blueprint for building the nation crafted by the the UP Diliman Task Force Nation-Building. Today, I would like to put the spotlight on two areas mentioned in the roadmap – social protection and education.

In the area of social protection, the blueprint said it must be universal and transformative.

Here are some of the points raised on this matter:

The situation: There is no adequate social protection coverage to insulate Filipinos from contingent risks.

Based on a report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA), poverty incidence increased from 16 percent in 2018 to 18 percent in 2021, with the number of poor Filipinos increasing from 22 million to 26 million. Some of the most vulnerable groups are children, those with no or inadequate incomes and older persons, while many Filipinos do not have sufficient access to healthcare.

Children need basic income security to survive factors threatening their care, nutrition, and education.

According to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD), 9.3 million children are poor and about 6.95 million depend on the Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps). Older persons are vulnerable to escalating health risks, which make it difficult for them to earn a living. As of 2020, there were about four million senior citizens who did not have pensions, according to the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA), while only two million out of around 9.5 million senior citizens received pensions, according to the Social Security System (SSS) and the Government Service Insurance System (GSIS).

Health insurance

The Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) found that in 2019 alone, out-of-pocket health spending in the country was at 48 percent, the third-highest in the ASEAN region, topped only by Myanmar with 76 percent and Cambodia with 64 percent.

Challenges

The implementation of the current social protection programs is weighed down by the following challenges: inequitable access to social protection programs and services, lack of policy coherence, clientelistic tendencies and patronage politics used by local politicians for their political interests, weak enforcement of social security programs as many companies still do not provide social protection for their employees, and lack of sustainability of welfare and safety net programs.

Recommendations

Given this situation, the UP Diliman Task Force recommends having social protection that is universal to help ensure closer coordination among government agencies and lessen inefficiencies, discretionary decision-making, and the influence of partisan politics.

The strategy must be rights-based and transformative. It also recommends partnering with civil society organizations and social movement groups using participatory governance approaches to implement the country’s social protection program to raise people’s awareness.

Education

In the area of education, here are some of the points raised:

Philippine higher education faces challenges such as inequitable access to and uneven quality of education, lack of continuity across educational levels (e.g., basic to higher education), and lack of complementarity between public and private schools.

There are also massive gaps in program implementation. In terms of participation rate, only 12 percent of the poor aged 17 to 24 years old are able to get  higher education.

Students who have access to technology and materials are the ones that benefit the most from the transition to distance learning. On the public-private complementarity issue, the participation of private institutions has been dwindling and they have been unable to recover their enrollment share after the shift to K to 12. Private institutions, which comprise 72.2 percent of higher education institutions, only account for 46.2 percent of enrollment, while public institutions, which make up 27.8 percent, account for 52.8 percent of enrollment.

Recommendations

To ensure the consistent quality of education and equitable access to it, the government should invest in technology and connectivity, especially in rural communities. Teachers must also be provided with adequate training and be equipped to handle various modes of teaching and innovations to curricula.

Alternative modes of delivery of education should be supported and institutionalized. These can include a mix of synchronous classroom-based learning and technology-supported distance learning to make it accessible to learners and responsive to recent developments. Forms of micro-learning or shorter, but more focused lessons can also be incorporated into online courses.

There are many other recommendations in the blueprint on how to build or rebuild our nation, but I believe that these two areas in particular are crucial in moving our country forward. I hope our policymakers would at least take this blueprint into consideration.

Iris Gonzales’ email address is [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @eyesgonzales. Column archives at eyesgonzales.com