Access to Education: Cause of Inequality in the Philippines?

Access to Education: Cause of Inequality in the Philippines?

by Jewel Carlos Sumayo

                           In one of the class discussions in our Globalization and Development (GLOBDEV) class we were able to talk about the different global shifts and inequalities. One of the sources of inequality is actually education. How come that education is one of the sources of inequality? There are statistics that were presented by organizations such as the UNICEF (2010) that there is a disparity between the female and male individuals who have access to pre-primary school (2007-2010 data) and secondary school (2007-2010 data). Other than education, two other sources of inequality are race and income. So why focus to education? In the Philippines, there are still areas in which there are no schools especially in remote areas in the provinces in which the children needs to go down from the mountain area where they live in order to go to school.

                          What does the government do with this? In the Philippines there are some initiatives that the government was able to conduct, such as looking for volunteer teachers that are willing to be destined in these areas in order to teach of course with additional benefits to compromise with their willingness to go these so-called barrios. For the Filipinos education is really important, because it is where their children will undergo in a process of learning different things in order to be ready to whatever choice of career they wanted. Education is also needed in order to know how to read and write, or even learn the English language which is very important nowadays in this globalizing world. There are Filipinos who are very lucky enough to be able to go to an academic institution that offers the finest and quality education (most of it are called private schools) however there are still Filipinos in which they cannot send their children in school even if in a public school system.

                          The possible hindrances on why some of the parents does not send their children in schools besides of course the financial incapability, for example is that for them their male children needs to help them in their farms in order to have more income to their family. There is also the culture of not educating the female children because they just need to help their mothers in the household chores and stay at home or help in their small-scale business. In this case the Philippine government were able to find a small solution in this kind of issues that will also somehow help the issues in the family such as giving the children incentives if they go to school, such as giving them a feeding programs and free health check-ups, as well as giving them two kilos of rice and other goods as incentives both to the children and to their family.Even if it sounds like a dole out project by the government (more of  band-aid solution) at least it still helps in a way that it encourage the children and their parents that education is really important.

Source for photo: http://gulfnews.com/polopoly_fs/philippines-1.643163!image/679043440.jpg_gen/derivatives/box_475/679043440.jpg