education « Victor Villanueva

Posts tagged with education

April 15, 2011

Congress hearing on the legislated ban on “No Permit No Exam” policies

Last March 23, 2011, Wednesday, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Higher and Technical Education tackled Kabataan Party-List’s House Bill 807 or the “Anti ‘No Permit No Exam Policy’ Bill.” It is a bill that would prohibit the implementation of the unjust “No Permit No Exam” policy being imposed in many schools, colleges and universities nationwide.

I’ve always believed that such a policy is unjust because it essentially forces the threat of academic delinquency on a student because of the financial capacity of his family. There are other means schools can explore in order to ensure payments of tuition and other fees without imposing prejudice on the academic standing of a student.

(Imagine a scenario where an honor student is dropped from the honor roll simply because his parent’s remittance was delayed due to a natural calamity in the country where the parent works, or a war breaks out there.) We actually received dozens of emails and calls a day last month because of the complaints about the “no permit, no exam” policy.

Majority of the congressmen in attendance favorably affirmed the bill in principle and agreed to have the bill consolidated into a final version with the other bills with a similar purpose. The consolidated version is to be approved on the next hearing. Only the congressman from A Teacher Party-List (which is a misnomer because they obviously represent the private interests of school owners and businessmen) rejected the bill and tried to water it down with so many nonsense insertions. As of the moment there are around thirty (30) congressmen who have signed House Bill 807 as co-authors.

On another note, we were able to successfully get the Commission on Higher Education (CHED) to speak about the issue, and in a joint press conference, CHED reiterated their Memo (CMO No. 02-2010) instructing schools through an appeal not to implement the “no permit no exam” policy. It also brought to everyone’s attention Sec. 99 of the Manual for Regulation of Higher Education Institutions which states that “no higher education institution shall deny final examinations to a student who has outstanding financial or property obligations, including unpaid tuition and other school fees corresponding to the school term.”

0 comments

October 6, 2010

Student protests against education budget cuts continue

More than a dozen members of the National Union of Students of the Philippines conducted a lightning rally inside the session hall of Batasang Pambansa to protest the proposed budget cuts of the Aquino administration against state universities and colleges. Outside Batasan, dozens more held a rally to urge Congress to reject the budget cuts, not only on state schools, but on other social services of the government, and rechannel non-productive yet monstrous spending on the military, on debt-servicing and on patronage dole-outs.

Students protest outside Congress against budget cuts

Kabataan Party-List Secretary General Vencer Crisostomo

0 comments

Youth protest against budget cuts

Thousands of students marched last Friday, September 24, from Plaza Miranda in Quiapo, Manila to Mendiola Bridge at the gates of Malacanang Palace, passing through the Quezon Boulevard Underpass

The past weeks saw pockets of protest in various parts of the country that lead to the massive walk-out of students nationwide to protest against the Aquino administration’s proposed budget cuts on state universities and other social services. The proposed budget for state universities next year is more then P400 million less than this year’s budget. When computed against a constant consumer price index and the increasing number of enrollees in state universities, next year’s state universities’ budget would be the lowest in per-student spending in state universities in more than a decade.

Read the rest of this entry »

2 comments

September 15, 2010

Lowest budget per iskolar ng bayan under Aquino

Libro hindi bala! Edukasyon hindi giyera!

In my preparation of the budget briefer for state universities and colleges (SUC’s), several points have become apparent.

President Noynoy Aquino’s budget proposal for the country’s SUC’s for 2011 is nominally much lower from the budget two years ago by as much as P2 billion. Though nominally it is larger than earlier years, it is possibly the lowest in more than a decade, when computed against a constant consumer price index.

President Aquino’s proposal also reflects the lowest per-student spending on SUC’s, again when computed against a constant consumer price index.

This trend is simply a continuation of a long-standing government policy of reducing state subsidies on social services such as higher education in order to ensure debt servicing on its foreign and local creditors. This follows the neoliberal dictates of multinational financial institutions forcing governments around the world to treat higher education a service commodity that must be left alone, and thus vulnerable, to free market forces. This is the same neoliberal dogma being forced by creditors upon the throats of governments worldwide from Greece to Bangladesh to California. This neoliberal dogma challenges the long-held ideal that higher education is a public good that serves a social purpose, crucial and necessary in the development of a sovereign democratic society.

What does the budget cuts mean? Corollary to budget cuts on state universities are tuition and other fee increases in campuses nationwide. In the context of the Philippines where a third of the population live on less than P100 a day, this neoliberal policy on higher education reinforces the tragic social and economic conditions of many Filipinos by depriving them of their right to higher education.

Protest actions have been set these days leading up to September 24, Friday next week, when thousands of students and out-of-school youth are expected to walk out and march to the gates of Malacanang to demand for greater state subsidy for education. Let us collectively reject the budget cuts on state universities and colleges, and on other social services!

12 comments

August 28, 2010

Initial observations of the 2011 Aquino budget

President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III (photo from www.gov.ph)

The Aquino Administration submitted its budget proposal for 2011 to Congress this week. It is through the budget where one can see the priorities of the government, in how much it intends to spend on various programs of government. For 2011, the government under the Aquino administration intends to spend P1.645 trillion.

In his budget message, the President claimed that the spending proposal of the government for next year is anchored on “reform”. The budget claims to have a “bias to the poor and the vulnerable”. However, right at the onset, it is still oriented towards severe austerity, masked with the euphemism “fiscal responsibility,” a government spending orientation that has been the standard policy for decades. It is a policy intended not to simply ensure that the “meager resources” of the government are spent wisely for the people, to ensure that the government is able to pay its foreign and local creditors its monstrous, anomalous and scandalous debt.

Just to show you how scandalous and hypocritical the government’s budget orientation is, the Aquino Administration proposes to pay foreign creditors and financial institutions a whopping P823.27 billion next year (P357.09 billion in interest payments, P466.18 billion in principal amortization not formally included in the P1.645 trillion total budget). According to the initial budget analysis and report of IBON Foundation, the increase in interest payments alone “is the largest absolute increase in interest payments in the country’s history and, at a 29.2% increase from the year before, is the second largest percentage increase after the 32.6% growth in 2000.”

Read the rest of this entry »

3 comments

June 16, 2010

First day of school

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

29 comments

May 21, 2010

On Kabataan Partylist’s “unsightly” graffitis

A few days ago, an anonymous reader left a comment expressing disappointment over graffitis spray-painted across the city during the election campaign period by members of Kabataan Partylist. These are the graffitis that read “Edukasyon Karapatan!” and “Tutulan ang Tuition Increase!” among others. The comment also asked me to condemn such forms of expression and dissuade our members from executing them.

Like any other form of protest, from rallies to boycotts and walk-outs, graffitis are meant to defy prevailing conditions. They create disturbance precisely because they draw attention to social issues and call people to actively get involved in such protest campaigns, without having to go through mainstream and “legal” limitations.

Graffitis may be unsightly, but they were not meant to be beautiful in the first place. Its very aesthetic, which some have descibed to be “unsightly”, connotes stealth and speed precisely because it is illicit. Protest graffitis are not murals or paintings that take many hours to complete and costly paints and colors to beautify. Youth activists, or any activist for that matter, do not have such luxuries.

The illegality of graffiti is all but expected in a society where the people who rule implement various regulations that seeks (desperately) to maintain the status quo. In a country where such status quo means an impoverished majority, a majority unable to afford tertiary education, graffitis that affirm the people’s right to social services and human development are nothing more but forms of legitimate resistance to the ruling order. Illegal, of course, but definitely legitimate.

Worried about the cost of the paints the government will have to use to cover the graffitis? Why paint over them then? It will simply affirm the guilt and the responsibility on their part. What’s so repulsive with a bridge post or a wall that screams for the people’s right to education?

I will not discourage our members from freely expressing our calls and our slogans through graffitis. And even more, I encourage people to explore similar creative forms of protest. No apologies from us.

0 comments

April 3, 2010

The campaign for greater state subsidy continues

Friends and supporters of the "PUP 5" jubilantly welcomed the five student leaders as they were released from detention at the Manila Police District HQ

It’s been almost a week since the tuition-hike saga of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines concluded with the successful junking of the proposal. It was formalized at the meeting of the university’s Board of Regents last Monday, after weeks of relentless protests by militant students to stop the almost 2,000% rise in tuition. Last Monday, the police also released the five student leaders after the PUP administration dropped charges of “robbery” against them. They were detained after they tried to bring to the office of the government’s Commission on Higher Education (CHED) some of their dilapidated chairs as a sign of protest. The reconciliation of sorts with the university administration came after representatives of Kabataan Partylist and other student leaders from PUP met with the PUP President and demanded the release of their comrades. In the meeting, the PUP President conceded and eventually surrendered to the democratic interests of the students and committed to supporting the campaign for greater state subsidy for the largest state university in the country instead of imposing a tuition hike.

The developments in PUP highlight one thing, now that the university administration has taken the side of the students and the people. The trail of responsibility for the neglect of our state universities and colleges ends at the gates of Malacanang and Congress. It is through the proposals and policies of the government, with the prodding of its foreign multinational lenders, that funding and support for higher education in the country has been on the decline. Despite increasing enrollment in the country’s public colleges and universities, state funding for such institutions has been dwindling over the decades. This year, state universities will get P3 billion pesos less from 2009. The same trend can be seen in countries across the world, from Greece to the United States, as indebted governments bow to the policy dictates of multinational creditors.

The continued neglect of our country’s state universities, notwithstanding the victory at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, sets the context that makes it imperative for the scholars of the people, and the rest of us, to continue fighting for the people’s right to education.

Students from PUP Manila and the University of the Philippines marched together to Plaza Salamanca in Manila to pledge their continuing fight for greater state subsidy for education and other social services

Congress hearing on the legislated ban on “No Permit No Exam” policies

Victor Villanueva

Advertisements

Advertisements

Twitter Updates

Recent Comments

Meta

Sponsored Links