Education for all!

One of the programs of the DepEd is to bring the advocacy of education reform closer to every Filipino.

To support this program, all the privileges are given to the children like the "no collection policy" and feedings for the school children.  This is to let the parents feel that financial matter is not an obstacle in sending their children to school. 

Likewise, the teachers will not easily drop the children from the roster for absenteeism but to save them instead to promote the right of a child to have a good education.

However, the government institution itself can hardly answer the needs of the children.  Children have risked their lives to reach the school every day.  Some children walked the two- or three-kilometer dilapidated road to and from the school; others crossed the rivers with their backpacks, climbed the hills, traversed the thick forest and passed the cliff.  And the rest had walked in the hanging cable wire to evade from the rampaging water in the river.  These are the indications that they do not want to miss classes.

But how much do they learn?  In this scenario, the number of hours allotted for each learning area is not completed because of no access road and transportation is very difficult.  They also suffered from the inconvenience in their studies, no enough classrooms, no enough textbooks and the multi grade system.

On the contrary, Philippines has seated in a mountain of gold.  We have heard over in the radio, read in the newspapers and seen in the television that Philippines has billions of money squandered. 

The Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF), popularly known as pork barrel, has P2.928 billion that is corrupted by the senators who were allegedly involved in fake projects managed by Janet Lim Napoles, who is now detained. 

The president gave P50 million to the senators who voted for the conviction of former Chief Justice Renato Corona at his impeachment trial and P10 million to P15 million lump-sum for each representative out of his Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) funds. 

All the chaos has really affected the improvement of the country's education system. Where are the sweet promises to serve the people?

What do we expect now?  The people whom we entrusted to uplift the economic status of our country are living with all the luxury while their constituents who enthroned them to the position suffered the adversity in life.

Does justice being serve to the program when children stop schooling because they feel they were deprived of what is best for them?

Orencia T. Abelgas

Master teacher 1

Alaska Elementary School

Cebu City