Group calls for students in school boards to monitor education spending

MANILA, Philippines — A youth group monitoring education accountability has called on local school boards to include more students in their roster and expand youth representation in education governance.

Multiply-Ed, an education accountability project by the Center for Youth Advocacy and Networking and the Government Watch, found that only four out of seven local school boards it included in its study had youth representation.

“The local school board is an important space where our government officials make decisions about us students, but we, students and stakeholders, have no reserved seat in the body,” said Jedi Sarmiento, project coordinator of the Multiply-ED initiative.

Presenting its findings to a mix of government and non-government representatives, the Multiply-Ed team on Thursday called for the creation of more School Board Advisory Councils – composed of students, principals and members of civil society – who will work with local school boards.

Local school boards are part of local government units that control the prized Special Education Fund (SEF), which is collected from 1% of all property taxes in a locality to supplement the needs of public schools. 

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the government leaned heavily on the use of the SEF to fund the Department of Education's costly learning continuity plan, which required the purchase of remote learning materials, allowances for additional teaching personnel, payment of health and sanitation expenses and establishment of health facilities, among others.

Ken Gilo, chairperson of the Student Council Alliance of the Philippines, said students should be present in education policy creation and implementation despite the absence of a requirement for their membership in local school boards.

“Students should be present in the identification of projects and formulation of the budget, as well as in implementation until monitoring and evaluation of programs that are meant to cater to us,” Gilo said.

Insufficient school funds

A third or 34% of schools included in the study did not have enough funds to cover the projected expenses in implementing their learning continuity plan, according to Multiply-Ed’s monitoring.

Multiply-Ed studied 53 schools across 10 school divisions, which it found to be mostly compliant with implementing a stakeholder-consulted learning continuity plan and DepEd’s safety standards for face-to-face classes.

Meanwhile, nearly half or 43% of the 115 teachers it surveyed said they did not receive assistance from their local government units.

Youth and student groups during the forum also called to increase the allocation for the Special Education Fund (SEF) from 1% to 2% to better involve students in local education governance.