Quality education deemed key to viable development

The Cebu Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI) announced its move to support the government’s efforts to sustain quality education to avoid threats of dwindling human capital strength in the country.

“Education is the key to a long-term solution to the plight of the people,” said Nonoy Espeleta, CSR Committee Chairman of CCCI.

 “This plight has resulted to the decrease in the competitiveness of today’s graduates, lack of sustainable growth due to shortage of qualified individuals and has led to the loss of attraction on foreign direct investments (FDI’s),” he added

Espeleta said CCCI is initiating a program to support the RA 8525 Act of 1998 also known as the “Adopt-a-School Program,” which was created to allow private entities to assist a public school, whether elementary, secondary or tertiary limited not only to the upgrading and modernization of public schools in the country. 

In partnership with Department of Education, CCCI takes on its share to help the youth of today by supporting the said program.

The group believes that with more and better educated people, the greater opportunities of economic development, he said.  

A recent survey by the Hong Kong-based Political and Economic Risk Consultancy (PERC) revealed that the Philippines ranked ninth place among 12 Asian countries surveyed - with South Korea, Singapore and Japan at the first, second and third place respectively.

It also revealed that educational standards in Southeast Asia rated poorly and the quality of education in the Philippines may be falling.  

Espeleta said education is one of the core values that have been deeply rooted in the Philippine community and is considered as an essential wealth that parents could pass on to their children. But for years, the quality of education has continuously declined resulting to a decrease of competitive graduates.

Because of this, the business community will extend its hands to rescue this alarming threat via implementing a sound and effective program in close coordination with the DepEd.

Based on the statistics of DepEd as of Aug 31 of last year, for school year 2006 – 2007, there were 12,083,661 elementary enrollees in 37,352 public schools with 343,646 teachers handling them. With 95 percent of all elementary students attending public schools, the educational crisis in the Philippines is basically a crisis in the public education. 

In a public forum on the “Challenges on Educational Reform”, former DepEd Undersecretary Juan Miguel Luz said, “Our schools are failing to teach the competence the average citizen needs to become responsible, productive and self-fulfilling. We are graduating people who are learning less and less.” 

 Espeleta emphasized the human capital theory, which put education and training as the most important investments for economic growth.