What else do you think are the problems that await the opening of classes next week except the same, old and familiar ones? They may be the same familiar problems every school opening but School Duvision Supt. Lorna Rances said the perennial inadequacy of basic school facilities will be augmented as all systems go for the opening of classes on June 6. This developed as Supt. Rances confirmed that the province of Bohol stands to benefit from the multi-billion-peso fund from item budget called “lump sum for the requirements of basic educational facilities” as announced by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM). “This is in line with President Aquino’s Social Contract with the Filipino People, where education is the central strategy for investing in the people and enhancing the youth’s opportunity to gain meaningful employment,” said the DBM.

The perennial shortage of facilities, such as classrooms, teachers, furniture, textbooks and toilets, is hounding the schools for ever-growing number of enrollees this ensuing school year. The province is expected to have a slice of the P563 million allotted for Central Visayas for the needed school facilities. But no specific amount how much Bohol really gets. The amount is part of the total of P7 billion released to the DepEd, said the DBM. Along with Central Visayas, the National Capital Region gets P1 billion, Calabarzon, P841 million and Autonomous Region for Muslim Mindanao, P660 million. But the DepEd admitted that “makeshifts” classrooms and some use “stage” as classrooms in some areas of the province remain the realities in public education as enrolment grows every school year.

Shared responsibility

The education of the children in public schools is a partnership between the “education leaders,” “learning facilitators” and the stakeholders or what it called the “school community” involving stakeholders, including the parents, to establish an ideal “friendly school system,” it pointed out. “Education leaders” and “learning facilitators” are referred to the supervisors and teachers, respectively. DepEd stressed that its role in educating the child is to bring about the “quality of education” for the children. It lamented that in previous years, DepEd is thought to be the sole responsible in the intricacies of educating the children, which is not supposed to be. Hence, educating the children is a shared responsibility. Stakeholders, like other government agencies and local government units concerned are also responsible in actively taking part of educating the children. They (stakeholdes) should contribute to child education through other means. LGUs can chip in efforts and funds in construction or rehabilitation of school buildings.

Number of Enrollees

But based on the DepEd’s report card, a total of 173,183 were enrolled in elementary during the period 2010-2011, higher than 171,794 and 168,824 pupils in 2009-2010 and 2008-2009, respectively. Teaching force accounted for 5,506 in 2010-2011 and 5,501 in 2009-2010 and 5,393 in 2008-2009. There are a total of 930 in 2010-2011; 928 in 2009-2010 and 924 in 2008-2009 school classrooms with pupil-classroom ratio of 35:1; 34:1; and 36:1 of the same periods. The ideal ratio is one teacher to 40 pupils of grades one, two and three while one teacher to 45 for higher grades of the elementary. DepEd expected the enrolment to swell to 5% for the pre-schoolers and at least 2% for the elementary in the next school year (2011-2012).

Performance

The learner’s performance posted a higher rate than in previous years in national achievement test (NAT 6). The division reaped total result of 68.07% in 2009-2009 than 63.37 in 2008-2009. The division posted 65.62%; and 59.68 in the fields of English and Science, respectively, for 2009-2010, a good feat if compared to 58.72%; and 51.20 of the same periods, except for Mathematics which recorded a lower (63.53%) in 2009-2010 than 69.21% in 2008-2009. Dropout rates has also declined as long as the students are motivated to continue going to school, said the DepEd. From 2.42% in 2008-2009 to 2.34% in 2009-2010, it decreased to 2.00% in 2010-2011 period, the report card indicators showed. (RVO)