To help stem the declining quality of the public school system, President Arroyo has ordered the Department of Education (DepEd) to draft a program aimed at improving the quality of its math, science and English teachers.
Mrs. Arroyo wants to raise the quality of graduates produced by the public school system "so that our young people can flourish in the world of the 21st century."
She has ordered the Department of Budget and Management to release P500 million for the program and the government is ready to spend more if the DepEd needs it.
Yesterday, Mrs. Arroyo inaugurated the newly renovated National Educators Academy of the Philippines at the Teachers’ Camp in Baguio City, where some 37,000 teachers will undergo training this summer.
She also announced that the government will soon launch a educational television program on science and English, dubbed "Para Kay Ma’am" (For Ma’am), for the benefit of teachers in remote areas.
"This way, the teachers learn from the comfort of their living room, if for some reason or another they find it inconvenient to go to a classroom," Mrs. Arroyo said.
The DepEd will develop the program with state-run NBN-4 station, to be beamed from the University of the Philippines.
Mrs. Arroyo has also ordered the Commission on Higher Education to offer discounts to teachers who want to take up higher studies in English, science and math in state colleges and universities.
"The enrichment seminar, of course, will be conducted all year round in colleges and universities because we encourage our teachers to continue with your education," Mrs. Arroyo said.
With four Filipinos born every minute into a weak economy, the DepEd supports 21.5 million students on an annual budget of about P90 billion, government figures show.
The President listed education as one of her top priorities at the start of a fresh six-year term, pledging full enrollment of school-age children and a computer in every classroom by 2010.
Business consultant Peter Wallace said education was key to reducing poverty in a nation of 84 million where at least half the population lives on just P100 a day.
"The deterioration in the schooling system over the past two or three decades is frightening," he said, citing the dismal 8.4 percent passing rate of fresh Filipino information technology graduates in a Japan-sponsored competency test.
"Other Asians used to flock to the Philippines to learn. No more. Their colleges are better than ours. A poor primary and secondary education must take most of the blame."
The United States introduced the public education system, along with the English language, in the Southeast Asian archipelago 103 years ago, at the end of the Spanish-American War.
Education and western-style democracy were seen as enduring legacies of several decades of US colonial rule. But, now, the deterioration of Filipinos’ fluency in English — the country’s lingua franca — is alarming educators and businessmen alike.
"When I last lived in the Philippines 20 years ago, the English language was more pervasive and far better than it is today," then US Embassy deputy chief of mission Joseph Mussomeli told local businessmen in 2004.
"There has been an erosion in this precious commodity and that has been detrimental to the Philippines in competing against other countries in this region," he said. — With Artemio Dumlao