More than two hundred youths from different universities and communities in Metro Manila marched yesterday, June 15, 2010, to the gates of Malacanang to protest the worsening crisis in education

Yesterday was the first day of classes for most schools, colleges and universities in the country. As millions flocked to their respective campuses, more than 8 million of our fellow Filipino youths and children will not even get to step inside a classroom. This marks one of the highest number of out-of-school youth in our nation’s modern history.

In Gloria Arroyo’s nine years in office, the nation has experienced budget cuts in education, tuition and other fee increases left and right and as mentioned, the highest out-of-school and drop-out rates in years.

Despite the constitutional guarantee that education is a right of each and every Filipino, going to school has increasingly been such a financial burden to millions of Filipino families, if they can get in a school at all. Even public elementary and high schools, with up to 61,343 in classroom shortage and 54,060 in teacher shortage, cannot accommodate all Filipino children, nor can they provide the kind and quality of education needed for national development. The Department of Education itself declared that there are as many as 5.6 million out-of-school children.

The students were able to squeeze past through the barbed wire barricades of Mendiola and march to Gate 7 of the Presidential Palace

The nation’s public universities, on the other hand, has been suffering budget cuts almost every year forcing them to extract tuition and other fees from their students and forcing them to sell resources which would otherwise have served their constituents. The Philippines actually has the lowest percentage of youths studying in state universities. In other countries, state universities and colleges accommodate majority of college-age youths. In the Philippines, we force them to either enroll in private institutions with steep tuition rates, or to not enter college at all.

While our parents’ wages have been stunted for decades, the government has allowed tuition rates in private schools and public universities to escalate. It has in fact almost doubled since Gloria Arroyo became President. In 2001, the national average cost per unit in colleges and universities was at P257.41. In 2010, it has almost doubled to P501.22. In Metro Manila where most of the country’s colleges and universities are located, it is worse. From P439.59 per unit in 2001 it has ballooned to P980.54 per unit in 2010. These don’t even take into account the long list miscellaneous fees being implemented by schools, which hide the real cost of education.

How do you expect children and the youth to enter or stay in school when their parents’ wages don’t keep up with the rising cost of education? When schools want to increase tuition every year, the government doesn’t do anything about it (in the name of institutional and academic freedom), leaving schools owners the free hand to milk our parents dry, forcing many of us to work ourselves. Nalulugi daw ang mga school, kailangan magtaas ng tuition. What a lie! Owning and operating schools has become one of the most profitable business ventures in the country. The country’s top 5 school earners raked in almost P16 billion in revenues the past six years. It is no wonder mall owners and other businessmen are buying and setting up schools and colleges left and right.

Ironically, when we ask for increases in wages and subsidies, the government makes all sorts of excuses to prevent it and even confronts the people with state-sponsored violence when we assert it.

What’s even more insulting is that the Arroyo government had the gall to bleed its people to hunger and poverty with increases in VAT and other taxes justifying them with promises of more spending in social services.

Without even brushing up on the health and housing sector, the fact is education spending was the lowest in two decades during the Arroyo administration. On average, the Ramos administration spent 15.5 percent of the national budget on education, the Estrada administration spent 18.7 percent. The Arroyo administration spent only an average of 15.1 percent of the national budget on education. Looking at it in another way, while Ramos spent on average an equivalent of 3.1 percent of the GDP on education and Estrada 3.7 percent, Gloria Arroyo spent only 3.3 percent when she took officein 2001, and dropped it even further to 2.19 percent in 2008. These figures are miles away from the 6.0 percent prescription of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organiztion (UNESCO).

So where did the VAT and the tax increases go? Aside from the billions being plundered by politicians, in truth, these tax hikes and budget cuts are only meant to ensure that the government can pay its monstrous and anomalous debt obligations to its foreign creditors, the very institutions that prescribed these policies in the first place, the same policies it is forcing down the throats of billions of people, from Greece to California.

In her TV advertisements’ own words, “sa totoo lang!” this is the Arroyo legacy in education.

Militant youth groups called on the incoming Aquino administration to hold accountable outgoing President Gloria Arroyo for her crimes against the people, and ultimately reverse her administration's policies of state abandonment of basic social services such as education

One of the many challenges therefore to the incoming Aquino administration is to reverse the policies of the Arroyo administration in education.

Aquino must increase state spending in education. Since the 2010 budget has already been passed, incoming President Noynoy Aquino must allot his discretionary and emergency funds to public schools for 2010. For 2011 and beyond, he must keep his promise to increase public spending on education, up to the prescribed 6 percent of the GDP, as promised by the Aquino-Roxas ticket.

Aquino must also implement a moratorium on tuition and other fee increases and allow our parents’ wages to catch up with the cost of education. You can’t expect parents to be able to send their children to school when you keep tuition rates unchecked while stunting their wages.

Aquino must also promote a nationalist curriculum, uphold the democratic rights of students, improve teachers’ welfare, improve science and technology development, promote transparency in education contracts and ultimately review and revamp existing policies in education.

Kabataan Partylist presented an eight-point education agenda that incoming President Aquino must address in order to improve the state of education in the country