Press Release
June 5, 2009

Villar urges review of whether poor students
are prioritized in public school and SUCs

Nacionalista Party President Senator Manny Villar is concerned whether poor children or students are given priority slots in public schools as well as state universities and colleges (SUCs). He fears that the country's education system has become overly commercialized to the disadvantage of cash-strapped Filipinos.

"The government infuses money, through the national budget, into public schools and SUCs with the main goal of providing needy Filipinos equal access to education. These government-funded schools have a different mandate than privately run schools. They are there to cater to children from poor families and not to operate for profits," said Villar.

The former Senate President cited that the ongoing economic crisis has further limited the Filipino families' ability to spend for their children's education. More than 20% of a typical Filipino household's expenses go to education, which include tuition fees and other contributions, schools supplies among others.

"Many parents have transferred their children to public schools because they cannot afford to pay the tuition fees in private schools anymore. This further increased the number of students in public schools, but genuinely poor students should not be bumped off from these schools however."

Villar bats for the continuous expansion of the Department of Education's Government Assistance for Students and Teachers of the Philippines (Gatspe) program, which provides subsidy so that students from low-income families can enrol or study in private schools. He said this would ease the high level of enrolment or overcrowding in public schools.

Moreover, Villar expressed alarm over feedbacks that have reached his office that there are more students from well-to-do families than from poor families that are enrolled in SUCs. Villar cited, "This should not be the case, SUCs are there to prioritize poor but deserving students. They should screen enrolees properly, so that poor students will not run out of slots in their campuses."

SUCs in the country include the University of the Philippines (UP), which has a population of more than 50,000 and has seven constituent universities located in 12 campuses all over the country. It also include among others, the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP)--the largest university in terms of student population--which has six campuses, two branches and ten extension campuses with a total of more than 52,000 students.

According to Villar, "The ongoing financial crisis has adversely affected the spending power of Filipinos. Many employees or workers have also been laid off from their jobs, thus they cannot afford to send their children to school anymore. Public schools can only accommodate so much. We must do everything we can to keep the children and the youth in school and out of the streets."

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization or UNESCO listed the Philippines among the East Asian countries that "face the greatest challenge" in the number of out-of-school children. The Philippines counts among the countries with relatively low enrolment ratios. In one of its reports, it cited that there is a 'strong negative correlation' between household poverty and the primary school attendance rate in both rural and urban areas in the country--meaning the poor are not likely to go to school.

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