Quality education and the 3-day school week

The school year 2013-2014 has opened and hello, the same problems that have plagued the Department of Education for decades apparently have continued on this year. Let us rewind a little bit to Pres. Benigno “PNoy” Aquino III’s 4th State of the Nation Address that he made last July 22, 2013 and allow me to quote the President’s own words:

“Let us move on to education. Our goal is to raise the quality of learning that our children undertake, so that once they finish their schooling, they can seize the opportunities now opening up in society; accomplished. We have finally erased the backlog we inherited in books and chairs, and if Secretary Armin Luistro continues to demonstrate true grit, even the backlog we inherited in classrooms will also be erased this year. And there’s more good news; now, we also have the ability to prepare for the additional needs that the implementation of the K to 12 program will require.”

Open up any local and national newspapers and you’ll read that despite the earnest efforts of DepEd Sec. Armin Luistro, they still fell short of their planned targets and in fact, the National Government is seeking the release of P7 billion more funds for the DepEd just to cope with the present sorry situation. In truth, once more DepEd miscalculated again their objectives not much different from what they’ve been doing in the past.

Meanwhile, thanks to this classroom shortage, DepEd has embarked on a cockamamie plan to go on a three-day school week, while other plan is to schedule a class in the morning and another class in the afternoon. If you ask me, this is quite confusing and perhaps a bit more expensive if you have more than one kid in school because as a parent or even a yaya, you have to fetch one kid in the morning and fetch your other kid in the afternoon after classes are over. This means more expenses for parents.

In my book, it only means that DepEd officials have ran out of better ideas on how to improve our educational system. This idea of only one class in the morning would be good for kids who would spend the rest of the day playing at home or with their friends. Now doesn’t it make you wonder what this would do to their respective grades? Now didn’t Pres. Aquino himself say in his SONA “Our goal is to raise the quality of learning that our children”? It just makes me wonder: how the DepEd raise the quality of learning with children spend only half day in the class?

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I didn’t know that the Office of the Special Prosecutor has revived a case against the wife of Vice-Pres. Jejomar Binay which was already dismissed with finality three years ago. A few months back, my contacts in Manila told me that this would happen and I told them that if a case was already dismissed, then they really have no case. But in the end, we learned that the OSP have reopened this case against Mrs. Binay. What I can say is that the usual harassment the Aquino regime is noted for.

So now the lawyers of Mrs. Binay are filing charges against the OSP for grave abuse of authority and violation of constitutional rights and political persecution for reviving that case. At this point we can very well say that if this is happening to the Binays, it is an indication that Pres. Aquino continues to believe that Department of Interior and Local Government Sec. Manuel “Mar” Roxas would be his presidential bet in the coming 2016 elections. That is if we have elections at all!

Remember the original plan for the exposure of the pork scam of Janet Lim Napoles was to demolish the opposition (Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla) and make Roxas look like a knight in shining armor. But then Binay was always the stumbling block to Roxas’ presidential plans. Therefore we have no doubt that the OSP had the approval of Malacañang in reviving her cases before the Ombudsman.

If at all, Pres. Aquino still has confidence in the victory of Roxas. It is due to the reality that his “Bata-bata” Comelec chairman Sixto Brillantes is still in-charge of the poll body which still uses the Precinct Count Optical Scan machines that the Comelec used (or should I say misused) in the last two elections which in the book of the Automated Election System Watch was a grand “electronic dagdag bawas.”

It is for this very reason why the Comelec is requesting a new big budget to buy a new PCOS machines in billions of pesos. Now why don’t you ask yourself as to who will approve the budget for a new PCOS machines? Certainly this would have to pass through Congress and the Senate. So now can we really trust those senators and congressmen to question why the Comelec would need P12 billion for those PCOS machines? We already wrote that we are against selling the old PCOS machines as it is the evidence for AES to prove that the PCOS machines were used to cheat in the 2013 polls. Selling them would be throwing away evidence of a criminal trial. 

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