EDITORIAL - No one left behind

As the school year draws to a close, learning institutions are once again preparing to increase tuition and other fees. Student groups count 400 schools, mostly offering higher education, that are preparing to charge more for their services in the coming school year.

Education is a business. Teachers’ salaries, maintenance and other operating expenses must be adjusted regularly for inflation. Facilities, especially IT equipment, must be constantly upgraded. Even government-run schools where tuition is free charge various fees.

Education is supposed to open opportunities for lifting people from poverty. But miscellaneous fees, aside from the costs that parents must shoulder to send their children to school such as daily transport fare, often force impoverished families to stop their children from going to school as soon as the kids learn to read, write and perform basic mathematics. The dropout rate begins as early as third grade.

The conditional cash transfer scheme aims to reduce the dropout rate by making children’s continuing education among the requirements for regular cash assistance. But CCT coverage is limited, and there are still too many impoverished families that can’t afford to sustain children’s education. In rural areas, older children are forced to drop out of school to help parents in farming, fishing or forestry.

An increase in school fees can swell the ranks of school dropouts. Education gets the biggest chunk of the annual national appropriation after debt payments. But the funding is still inadequate, especially when compared to the percentage of GDP that other Asian countries allocate for public education.

Even the country’s top university, which offers subsidized tuition to many students, needs more funds. In March 2013, a freshman at the University of the Philippines in Manila was barred from attending classes for failure to settle P10,000 in back tuition. Despondent, Kristel Tejada died after drinking silver cleaner. The state university has since revised its policy on tuition payment. But it’s still in dire need of additional funds, particularly for its College of Medicine in UP Manila, which shares funding with the Philippine General Hospital.

Educational institutions need funds to sustain operations and, for the private sector, to earn a reasonable profit. The government must find ways to ensure that regular tuition increases will not worsen the school dropout rate. When it comes to investing in the nation’s human resources, no one must be left behind.