Kabataan Party-list Rep. Mong Palatino today reacted to Pres. Gloria Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address, saying that her ‘Cinderella stories’ are not reflective of the real state of the education sector.

“Mrs. Arroyo did not do her homework very well. Who’s pussy-footing now?,” was Palatino’s tongue-in-cheek reaction.

“As with her previous SONAs, Arroyo used the Cinderella tales of youths and individuals who made accomplishments based on their own merit, claiming them as her own. Mylene Amerol-Macumbal and Jennifer Silbor’s stories are only isolated tales of success. Instead, the plights of many Jonathan Montemayors, Julie Albiors and Flores Biwangs represent the real picture of the education sector.,” Palatino said.

Palatino said that Arroyo used only the ‘safe’ numbers that could stupefy the crowd, that she failed to cite damning but accurate and relevant statistics.

The young solon was referring to the disheartening stories of Albior and Biwang, topnotchers in the 2006 National Achievement Test (NAT) who failed to enter college in the University of the Philippines due
to poverty.”

He also cited the story of twenty-year-old nursing student Montemayor who committed suicide last week after he was forced to stop his studies.

Palatino also said Arroyo’s 600,000 scholarships did not make an impact, as they were mere “token subsidies” rather than genuine solutions to education woes.

“The scholarships are actually a manifestation of the increasing cost of education. The government is dishing out scholarships because it cannot control fee hikes in schools. Instead, the government should regulate tuition and other fee increases of both private and public learning institutions. Bakit kailangan ding i-privatize ang state universities and colleges na sana’y nagbibigay ng mura o libreng edukasyon? Iilan lang naman ang makikinabang sa mga scholarship na ito,” he said.

Palatino also said that Arroyo should not be too proud of her ‘higher investment in technical education and skills training’ because ‘the orientation of tech-voc education in the country is export-oriented’.

“Para saan pa ang ipinagmamalaking investment ni Arroyo sa tech-voc kung inilalako rin lamang sila sa ibang bansa?” Palatino said.

Additional years of schooling slammed
Palatino also slammed the Presidential Task Force on Education’s proposal to reform the curriculum of professions seeking international recognition. The task force recommended that students who want to take engineering, architecture, accountancy, pharmacy and physical therapy should undergo 10 years of basic education, two years of pre-university, before three years of university.

“While adding another year will improve the quality of these courses as it is now a global trend, this does not necessarily mean an improvement on our part. Countries with more years of schooling have higher allocation and spending for education. Our budget for education, on the other hand, has been dwindling since 2001., Palatino said.

The Philippine government spent a measly 2.5 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product on public educational institutions in 2007. This pales in comparison to its neighboring countries Malaysia with 6.2 percent and Thailand with 4.2 percent. Laos even spent more at 3.0 percent. The minimum prescribed standard for education spending set by UNESCO is 6 percent of a country’s GDP. ##