Education in the Philippines

Education is an important human capital that contributes to the economic development of a country. It has been an important production factor in today's globalized setting and thus has become a condition for competitiveness, but in the Philippines, this is not the case. For a country undergoing economic crisis for so many years and wishes to have a better standing in the global market, education is an area that should be given an improvement, but instead it has been declining in quality and has been producing troubling results. The quality of education in the country has been a big factor for debates for the past years because of the fact that before, the Philippines was a forerunner in education among the Southeast Asian countries, but today, the country ranked seventh among the eight nations in Southeast Asia in the area of education according to the statistics gathered by the National Competitiveness Council (NCC).

In the NCC's forum last June, they've presented the results of their 2010-2011 Global Competitiveness Report of the World Economic Forum where Philippines ranked seventh among the eight Southeast Asian countries in education, 99th out of 138 economies in primary education, 69th in educational system, 112th in science and math, and 76th on Internet access. The country was falling behind Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam in all categories according to the NCC's statistics. But despite the given results, the council still believes that the country could make a strong headway especially if the academe and the private sector would work together and focus on doable goals such as having greater university-industry collaboration in research, use of more technology in education and having a limited number of colleges and universities. They said that it would be more practical to make the students use e-books which are easier updated instead of spending billions and billions on textbooks. They've also proposed the collaboration between industries and universities so as to make the research outputs from the universities be converted into something useful, as well as the establishment of few but better colleges rather than having "too many mediocre colleges".

Currently, education in the country is not in good state as what the statistics have revealed and because the economy is not stable as well. But like what the council has said, I believe that the country will manage to catch up as long as we will work together and not leave everything to the government. We, as citizens of this country, have our own share of responsibilities to help the nation progress. With regards to the NCC's proposals, I think they could work but I believe that we could find a better solution aside from budget cuts, protests and rallies. Education is an area that shouldn't be set aside. It needs more attention because it's not just for the benefit of the young ones but for the