ONE OF the obvious and important reasons why students attend school is the wealth of knowledge, surprising amount of information and skills, and quality education provided within the school setting. School provides a safe haven for voluminous ideas, recognizes how these ideas learned, and often gives access to concepts and abilities that would not regularly find in homes. But is this really the school setting of today? Is the education system good? Are the teachers’ prime roles support it? Are the students really receiving quality education?
With many studies and numerous researches about our Philippine education, it is saddening and alarming to face it right now because particularly in public schools, the poor quality education is well-observed. But who should be blamed? Whose fault is it? Pointing fingers will never be useful for this demanding issue. It will surely prevent solutions. But breaking down some reasons could be a valuable step to resolving why the country’s education is deteriorating. These are seat-of-the pants understanding to why they should be given major attention: poor school facilities; poor expertise of teachers; poor student to teacher ratio; clerical jobs and miscellaneous works of teachers; and corruption in many ways.
Poor school facilities: The condition of the school facilities has an important impact on students’ performance and teacher effectiveness. Not because it is public school, students do not have the right to have well-maintained school facilities. Some of the visible problems are lacking of classrooms, lacking of tables and chairs, lacking of instructional rooms and laboratories, poor ventilation, poor comfort rooms and canteens, and the like. Students surely want something sufficient and even though they are only in a public school, it doesn’t mean that they don’t have the right to study in a comfortable environment. The government should do something about this because that is the right thing to do.
Poor expertise of teachers: Teachers have the most powerful influence on quality education. What teachers do in the teaching-learning process is critical in student success. Students trust teachers so much that they see them as one of the most reliable sources of what they need to know. Hiring incompetent teachers and promoting unskilled teachers must be stopped. The standard and qualification must be strictly implemented.
Poor student to teacher ratio: It is unstoppable that the number of enrolling students continuously increases every year; and the student to teacher ratio remains unsolved. The Department of Education once reported and posted on The Philippine Star issue last March, 2018 that the average of student-teacher ratio in public schools has significantly improved from 1 teacher per 45 students in previous years to 1:36. Where did they conduct the research, because as of today, 1:53 is still the class size. Still, the DepEd should continue conducting intervention programs to achieve the real ideal class size.
Clerical jobs and miscellaneous works of teachers: By description, a teacher teaches especially in school. The job of a teacher is to teach – back to the basics, and make teaching the single most important agenda of teachers. Today many teachers spend a lot more time doing many things other than teaching. The list of tasks teachers have to do is endless. Unloading these tasks is not enough. There must be non-teaching positions in schools to do such so teachers can focus more on teaching.
Corruption in many ways: Education especially in public schools is corrupted, imbalance, lacking necessary checks, where certain people practice dishonesty, dictatorship, and act without due consideration for some other participants particularly the teachers and students. This argument is serious but these certain people should revisit their ethics, integrity, morality, and conscience.
Sound arrogant but perhaps, those things must be taken serious attention. Efforts must be made to ensure the quality of education students receive. Of course the actions will not take effect overnight or in just a snap of a finger. Everything has to be gradual. Everything is a process. And it should starts now.
(Unsolicited contributions here are unedited, unabridged, as is. Errors in grammar, syntax, etc, solely the writer’s. — Editor)
