The day Efren Peñaflorida was named 2009 CNN Hero of the Year was a great day for the Philippines as it sent a message to the world that this country of 7,107 islands is home not only to heroes of freedom and democracy like Jose Rizal and Ninoy Aquino but of education and social work as well. Acclaimed for his innovative pushcart classroom, Peñaflorida made his countrymen –many of them working as housemaids and caregivers in various parts of the world – proud that they are Filipinos.

Peñaflorida’s honor, however, is sending another message that the Philippine education system has failed to reach the poorest of the poor because of the government’s misdirected priorities.

In its 2008 report titled “Education for All, Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters”, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) blamed the government’s failure to address inequalities in education for the poor literacy and numeracy skills of Filipino children.

The report said Filipino children who belong to the poorest 20 percent of the population receive five years less education than children from the wealthiest families. The same report said that on average, the poorest 20 percent have 6.3 years of education compared to 11 years among the well-to-do families in the Philippines.

“Unequal distribution of education has wider consequences,” the report noted. “Income-based gaps in educational opportunity reinforce income inequalities and the social divisions that come with them. They also mean the benefits associated with education in areas such as public health, employment and participation in society are unequally distributed. The human costs of these inequalities are cumulative and cross-generational.”

Citing a 2007 report of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the Unesco report also noted the widening wage gap in the Philippines between those with college education and those without. Unesco described the Philippines as among the 21 countries with “high enrolment, low survival.” ADB’s projections show that of the estimated 29 million children who will still be out of school in 2015, more than 900,000 will be Filipinos.

These observations were shared by the National Statistical Coordination Board (NSCB), which confirmed the low participation rate in the elementary level. In a factsheet posted on 11 June 2008 in its website, the NSCB reported that the Philippines is “far from achieving Education for All” by 2015 because of the consistent drop in the net enrolment ratio or participation rate at the elementary level from school year 2002-03 to school year 2006-07.

Citing Department of Education (DepED) data, the NSCB said the participation rate in elementary schools in school year 2006-07 stood at 83.2 percent, lower by 1.2 percentage points from the previous school year. At the high school level, on the other hand, it has only been 58 to 60 percent. It increased barely by 0.1 point in school year 2006-07.

Net enrolment ratio or participation rate is the ratio of the enrolment for the age group corresponding to the official school age in the elementary or secondary level to the population of the same age group in a given year. The official school age is 6-11 for elementary and 12-15 for secondary.

“These figures for both elementary and secondary education indicate that the country is still far from achieving the goal of providing basic education to all based on UNESCO’s World Declaration on Education for All (EFA), UN’s Millennium Development Goal (MDG) on education as well as the Philippine EFA 2015 Plan,” the NSCB said.

Unesco has strong reasons to blame the government. Despite a constitutional requirement that the Education department should get the biggest allocation of the annual budget, it continues to come third to debt servicing and the internal revenue allotments (IRA) of local government units. In the 2009 budget of P1.415 trillion, DepEd only got roughly P160 billion, compared to P600 billion allotted for national debt servicing and the P260 billion allocated for IRA.

To fill the widening gap created by the government’s misdirected priorities, ingenious Filipinos like Efren Peñaflorida found creative ways to address the problem. It is a blessing in disguise. But the celebration over Peñaflorida’s honor will have its true meaning if it succeeds in serving as a wake-up call for government to really pay more attention to education.

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