PBEd Framework

A FRAMEWORK FOR PHILIPPINE EDUCATION

BACKGROUND

“It is crucial that education for everyone in such a large and rapidly growing population must first be made real and possible in the minds of a few before it can become concrete and present in the lives of all.” Philippine Education for All Plan 2015

This is a framework, by the business community for the business community, with two intended uses:

1. to serve as a shared basis for sustained business community engagement with critical and foundational institutional and policy reforms in the education system;
2. to provide a collective roadmap for guiding individual pro-education projects of different corporations toward more synergies, greater coherence and maximum impact

While the perspective is that of business, the common desire of many segments of society to transform the education system will be a driver for business to forge links with other sectors working for the same cause.

PBEd Presscon (standing) Chito B. Salazar, Atty. Ricardo Romulo, Mr. Rizalino Navarro (seated) Mr. Ramon R. del Rosario, Jr., Mr. Jose L. Cuisia, Jr., Mr. Jose Pardo, Dr. Patricia Licuanan

OUR BUSINESS IN EDUCATION

Underdevelopment and poverty are primary problems of the Philippines. The development of our country and the elimination of mass poverty among Filipinos will depend on our economy’s competitiveness in a global economy that is technologically driven, inter-connected, and increasingly knowledge-based.

Only when individual Filipinos as well as the whole Filipino nation compete and succeed in this environment can the country’s economy create jobs, attract investments, and improve incomes at levels necessary for sustainable development. This implies building future national economic growth on accelerating the development of a globally connected service economy (e.g., IT and IT enabled services, tourism, medical related services, banking and finance, etc.)

In this environment, our greatest competitive potential lies in the quality and capacity of our human resources. We still have the opportunity of making the most of a large and growing population of hard working, English-familiar and relatively educated people.

Building our economic future on our human resources naturally demands that we:

1. Broaden and deepen the competitive advantage from the presence of a large segment of comparatively better educated and English speaking Filipinos;
2. Continue to improve the quality of our trained people across the many areas of human performance; and
3. Constantly update the knowledge-base and technical skills of Filipinos at par with the best in the world.

Meeting these demands in turn requires an education system that reaches everyone, provides equal opportunities and consistently yields capacity-building outcomes to make Filipinos, coming from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds and living in widely different communities, who are nonetheless all:

1. Functionally literate and able to think critically
2. Proficient and confident in the English language
3. Enabled and technically skilled in information technologies
4. Endowed with a Filipino sense of a global world view

To achieve this, the education system itself must be:

1. Effective: uses resources wisely to build desired competencies
2. Efficient: performs well against benchmarks in global standards
3. Universal and inclusive: provides equal opportunity for all to access quality educational outcomes
4. Responsive and flexible: able to adjust to ethnic and cultural diversity, changing market demands and rapid technological developments

WHERE WE BELIEVE WE SHOULD BE

We must have an education system that is able to meet the demands of a national effort to successfully compete in the global economy based on the competitiveness of our human resources. Such an educational system must be a well-functioning system composed of different segments, each performing well a particular role in the many processes essential to developing our human resources.

In the basic education segment, encompassing early childhood, elementary, secondary education: Schools and other forms of organized delivery of instruction must enable all young learners to master basic competencies necessary for everyone to become functionally literate. Functional literacy is defined as the range of skills and competencies which enables individuals to: live and work as human persons; develop their potentials; make critical and informed decisions; and function effectively in society within the context of their environment and that of the wider community in order to improve the quality of their lives and that of society.

In the post-secondary education segment, encompassing technical, vocational and higher education: Dynamic and creative learning institutions must be able to:
1. Develop a skilled, professional, and competitive workforce
2. Create, preserve, and communicate knowledge

The direction is a diversified, market driven post-secondary education segment whose strength comes from the variety of institutions it fosters and the innovations that it encourages. A globally connected economy needs a variety of universities pursuing a wide variety of missions funded by a variety of means. Diversifying sources of funding for post-secondary education and encouraging variety and innovation in programs and institutions reinforce each other.

A BUSINESS AGENDA FOR EDUCATION

We do not support quick fixes that are unable to alter systemic results. We, however, recognize the urgency of acting on problems and opportunities that can meet the aspirations of some, even if the aspirations of many remain unrealized. Small-scale action does not contradict systemic reform. We affirm the need for sustained, methodical, possibly inter-generational and long-term effort to build a new and better educational system through the transformation of the current, weakened and impoverished one. In our view, the transformation of Philippine education involves two components:

Component 1: Adopt the Basic Education Sector Reform Agenda

Business advocacy for the following policy reforms:

1. Make every school continuously perform better.

2. Teachers: Get all teachers to continuously improve their teaching practices

3. Longer Cycle: Adopt a 12-year cycle for formal basic education

4. Curriculum Development: Continue enrichment of curriculum development in the context of pillars of new functional literacy

5. Financing: Provide adequate public funding for country-wide attainment of EFA goals

Component 2: Evolve a Globally Responsive Post-Secondary Education System

Business advocacy for the following policies:

1. Move towards a deregulated, market driven sector (focus regulatory standards on output measurements rather than input requirements)

2. Establish pre-tertiary bridge programs

3. Rationalizing the SUC system (leveling the playing field)

4. Reviewing the general education curriculum

PRIORITY CONCERNS

1. The Basic Education Cycle
2. Medium of Instruction (mother tongue for Primary to Grade 2)
3. Financing Education & Managing SUCs
4. Quality of Teachers
5. Focusing Business Sector Contributions
6. Sectoral programs (e.g., ranking the schools)