Back to school

AS SCHOOL children return to school on June 2, education officials have assured that there are enough classrooms and textbooks for this school year. Of course, we have heard this before.

And as much as we have heard this every time school re-opens, we are all also witnesses to schools having their class under trees. Some have divided rooms to accommodate two or more classes. Then there are those who simply make do with any space available on a school campus.

This may not be the case in Laoag City and Ilocos Norte—well mostly not the case—but this would be the case in most parts of the country.

An education assistant secretary has categorically stated that the Dept. of Education has addressed the classroom shortage and they are now nearer to the ideal classroom to student ratio of 1:45.

Barely had the ink dried on this news report when Presidential Communications Operations Office Sec. Herminio Coloma Jr. clarified that the classroom backlog that has been addressed was the backlog left behind by the previous administration in 2010.

To be specific, 66,813 classrooms have been built as of December 2013. However as stated earlier, the number of classrooms build was only to address the 2010 backlog. As it is, four years have passed since then, and we can only wish that school population all over the country have remained at 2010 levels.

The slow reconstruction process in Visayas is also surely to make a huge dent on the shortage of classrooms after schools were literally wiped out by a supertyphoon and a massive earthquake.

Education is supposed to have the biggest pie in the national budget. And as much as it appears to be so, in reality it is not. Debt servicing still holds this distinction.

That in the end, the record-breaking economic growth the country has achieved in the last three years really means nothing as they only become numbers that have not translated into better living conditions—and yes, better manager of the education system of our country.

Expanding basic education by two years may have been a step in the right direction as we are now up to international standards. But if our school learners continue to study in congested classrooms or in any other improbable places, their learning would remain—and would always be—compromised. And no amount of additional years or subjects would be able to offset the fact that school conditions are not really apt for learning.

If our officials are really concerned about our country and our people, they should really start walking their talk and truly invest in education. This is the only way this country could attain progress and development.