This documentary is about the education system in the Philippines, with focus on elementary education, and the problems it is facing. Interviews with the students and teachers from elementary schools in Mandaluyong, as well as Department of Education officials from the division of Mandaluyong.



Education in the Philippines

EDUCATION: Philippine Agenda



And while tuition is free in public elementary and high schools, average expenditures for the rest of the items are in the order of P15,000 - P20,000 per year.

Now, for tertiary education, tuition alone averages P437 per unit for the country as a whole, with tuition in Metro Manila almost double that - P855 per unit, which translates to tuition averaging P16,000 to P30,000 per year, although annual tuition can go as high as P125,000 a year.

Little wonder then that the higher the level of education, the larger the number of dropouts.

According to the latest Philippine Human Development Report, out of 1000 children who enter grade 1, by grade 2 some 140 will have dropped out, and by grade 4 another 100 will have dropped out.

Out of these 760 children who reach grade 4, only 670 will make it to grade 6, and only 650 children will actually complete the full elementary cycle of six years.

But the story does not end there. Of those 650 who finish elementary school, only 580 will go on to high school. Seventy will dropout of these 580 and only 420-430 will graduate from high school.

Of those high school graduates, only 230 will enroll in college. It used to be 260 when I first started tracking these figures. Out of that 230 who go to college, only 120 of them will actually graduate, or obtain a college degree.

In sum, only 120 out of 1,000 Filipinos who start grade 1 will finish college, the other 880 will have dropped out along the way.

And the worst is yet to come: Of those 120, who finish college only 1 will come from the poorest of the poor - from families at the bottom 10% of the income ladder.

In other words, most of the dropouts are going to be from the lower income groups, whose poverty is perpetuated because they lack the necessary education and skills.

It is a vicious circle, which, as yet, the government has been unable to break.

Another way of illustrating the magnitude and depth of what has been called the crisis in Philippine education is to look at enrollment figures, as shown in the recently launched Philippine Human Development Report of 2008-2009.

The annual average growth rate in public elementary and high school enrollment over the 12-year period 1995-2007 was about 1.78%.

But one sees declining rates over the period, starting with 3.37% growth rate between first and second year of that time period, and ending with less than 1/3 of 1% between the 11th and 12th year.

And not only that: The absolute number of enrollment actually declined in school year 2005-2006 for the first time in recent memory.

At the college level, the same thing happened in school year 2002-2003 (from 2.47 million enrollees to 2.43 million) and in 2004-2005 (from 2.43 million to 2.40 million).

The bottom line so far, with respect to enrollment and dropouts, is that as of 2007, there were 1.84 million out-of-school youth ages 6-11, and 3.94 million ages 12-14; that a total number of out-of-school youth will be 5.8 million young Filipinos who will be eventually entering the labor force with very few skills, and not enough education to allow them to increase those skills and therefore their earning ability.

These almost 6 million unfortunate Filipinos should be the prime targets of the so-called stimulus package of this government.


The State of Philippine Education by Lawrence Anthony S. Dimailig reflects the educational status of the Philippines. The video clip serves as a call to the Philippine Government to strengthen education in the country because it is the foundation of a better future.