I would first like to express my pleasure for having been invited as one of your annual district conference guest speakers.  As you may know, my father was a long-standing and active Rotary member.  He was a firm believer in the important role of non-government and people’s organizations in nation-building.  I stand here today to affirm that belief in our essential roles—each one of us and the groups we belong to—in REBUILDING this country ravaged by many years of greedy self-interest.  I stand with you today in believing that, indeed, we can “MAKE DREAMS REAL” especially for the millions of Filipino children and youth.

Friends, I hope that we all agree that if we are to address the plight of “disadvantaged Filipino children”, we are not only talking about a few thousand street children, differently-abled children, children in conflict with the law or children in war.  For sure, we do need to give attention to these children in challenging situations.  However, we need to address urgently as well the situation of over 17.3 million Filipino children who are in our public schools and another 1.7 million of school age (7-12) who are out of school.   Our system of education is systematically making it more difficult for our children to learn to learn and learn to achieve.  In fact, the system makes it impossible for many to get in and for even more to stay in.

Today as I speak before you, some 19 million Filipinos are systematically being left behind. 

The Crisis in Philippine Education

In 2006, when we first established Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) as the business community’s voice for sustained advocacy in education policy and institutional reform, we re-echoed former education secretary Butch Abad’s call for action to address the crisis in Philippine education.  At the 2007 National CEAP Convention, I proposed that the crisis was one of national proportions, THE crisis of our age.  

Today, our public basic education school system has a whopping 17.3 million schoolchildren enrolled.   While this seems like a lot, let’s look at the inverse figures:

• One in 10 Filipinos, or 6.8 million, has never gone to school
• One in 6 Filipinos, or 9.6 million, is functionally illiterate
• One in 3 children or youth, 11.6 million, is not in school

One of the main problems is retention or keeping our kids in school.  The largest chunk of elementary dropouts leaves before grade four.  The main reason for this is hunger – the children, due to malnutrition, are not strong enough to attend school or concentrate on their classes.  Surprisingly, a substantial number of students also drop out because of a lack of interest, in part brought on by the miserable state of their schooling – the shortage of classrooms and textbooks and the low quality teachers.

As a result, scores of our children and youth abandon their education and join the ranks of the uneducated and functionally illiterate.  However, for those who stay in school, their circumstances are not necessarily better nor their futures necessarily brighter.

In the 2008 National Achievement Tests (NATs) the average score among public elementary school students was close to 65 percent and among high school students was an even lower 49 percent, 75 percent is the passing score. In a 2004-2005 Oral Reading Test, only 23 percent of grade five students and 23 percent of grade six students were independent readers, or read with comprehension at their appropriate age level in either Filipino or English. 

The sorry performance of our students is no wonder, however, when class sizes can peak at 80 although the ideal is 25; when students in the same class hold different versions of a textbook that they need to share with one, two or three other classmates and which they can never take home; when all the subject matter they need to learn is crammed in 10 years while the rest of the world does it in 12; when physical education teachers are expected to teach physics; and when despite low investments in education, P22 billion is reportedly lost in overpriced materials which could translate to 45,000 classrooms or 11 million desks or 440,000 computers that weren’t bought.

The implications of these figures for the nation become obvious and disheartening when put side by side with the data on poverty.

• The incidence of poverty among those without an education is 56.8 percent,
• Among the elementary undergraduate, 37.7 percent,
• And among those who graduated from elementary only, 17.9 percent.
• A 2001 study showed that an additional year of schooling increases individual wages by 6.5 to nine percent.    

Clearly, if we are to develop, if we are to address poverty, if we are to genuinely address the welfare of Filipino children, we must make education THE national priority. 

I must highlight at this point that though the numbers I present above are for the public school system, the private school system is as much in dire straits because students have been migrating to the free public schools spurned by the inability of their families to pay for tuition and fees amidst growing poverty incidence.  The private school system is comprised not only of the elite schools but includes as well a large network of parochial schools attached to Catholic Parishes all over the country and other smaller private schools; not to mention private madaris schools of our Muslim brothers and sisters.  Quality in this larger sector of private education has been suffering from lower tuition and fee collections that affect the ability of the schools to provide for teacher pay and welfare, facilities and equipment.

Study-based Solutions and the Role of PBEd

PBEd, in consultation with education experts and cognizant of existing research-based recommendations for Philippine education reform has consistently highlighted and put forward the following key levers to address the crisis:

1. We must sustain a reform program that will keep our kids in school, help them learn to learn and subsequently learn to achieve.
2. We must improve teacher quality and move from credentials-based to competency-based teacher hiring, promotions and development.
3. We must adopt the global standard and implement a 12 years plus pre-school basic education cycle. 
4. We must invest more in education toward full attainment of education for all financing requirements based on long-term plans and not as mere crisis response.
5. We must decentralize the system through effective school-based management and school-community action.

The solutions above are key as well if we are to sustain a healthy private school sector.  For example, more investment in education by the state can mean more subsidies for private high schools to absorb poorer students more cost-effectively rather than building more public high schools.

And it is in such articulation of solutions that we saw PBEd playing a vital role when we first organized ourselves in 2006.  In the first place, we felt that even the business community had not yet fully appreciated the extent of the crisis in Philippine education.  Many corporate foundations and/or corporate funded programs in education became comfortable in their own little spaces of education intervention.  Often, synergies were not even maximized by working with NGOs already on the ground and possessing proven frameworks and systems for intervention; and almost always, never working together with other corporate initiatives.

As many in the business community were already committed to education projects and programs, PBEd took it upon itself as an organization of CEOs and other senior executives to focus on the big picture of policy and institutional reform and sustaining the needed advocacy beyond the life of projects and programs, beyond education secretaries and beyond state administrations/regimes.

That role we embraced and our playing of that role, we note, has been welcomed.  The larger education reform constituency—a growing constituency, mind you—expressed appreciation most especially of our insistence on going back to already existing research-based proposals—many of which were only gathering dust as books or folders in some shelf or file drawer at some government office despite proven efficacy and huge investments in time and money poured into project and program piloting.  Through PBEd, we hope to help push forward, together with other education stakeholders a comprehensive agenda for change with learning and the learner at the heart of this change.

PHINMA In and For Education

Allow me now to share with you what we as the PHINMA corporate family have taken on as our mission and role in and for Philippine education.

For the past fifty years, PHINMA built its name, reputation, and success in manufacturing, in particular, of cement. Through Bacnotan Consolidated Industries, PHINMA had stakes in four cement plants while managing two other plants.  Combined, these PHINMA managed plants had a total annual finished mill capacity of 8.2 million metric tons of cement, fully 50% of Philippine supply.  From cement to paper to roofing and coal – PHINMA produced the material used for many of this country’s roads, bridges, and skyscrapers. 

Not too long ago, PHINMA left its legacy -- manufacturing -- and moved into new territory – services-- primarily those that every Filipino household needs – housing, power and electricity, finance, and education.   Its mission today is to help build the Philippines through competitive and well-managed business enterprises that enable Filipinos to attain a better quality of life. With effective management as its distinctive edge, it aims to give Filipinos improved access to the essentials of a dignified life.

An even more specific example is PHINMA’s entry particularly into education. Our intention is to build up to an aggregate student population of about 100,000 students. Our vision is to provide education through a network of four to five universities or colleges in key education centers around the country, the PHINMA Education Network.  The goal is to have 100,000 students in the system; our chosen market, the lower C and the D markets.

Hence, in 2004 PHINMA purchased Araullo University, in Cabanatuan, Nueva Ecija, an institution of around 6,000 students; in 2005, we bought Cagayan de Oro College, in Misamis Oriental, with about 5,000 students; and in 2009 we acquired University of Pangasinan, in Dagupan City, with 9,500 students and University of Iloilo, with another 7,000 students.  Indeed, the students of our schools are the children of farmers, policemen, public school teachers and other government workers, of tricycle and pedicab drivers and street vendors and manual laborers. 

This market the PHINMA Education Network is committed to serving is the marginal in Philippine society, the students that need quality education the most -- that need the best and greatest opportunities to improve their lot in life.  Why choose this market? Because if education is to contribute to genuine development in the Third World, then this is the market to which the network must cater.

The first order of business then is to make quality education accessible. But how do we plan to provide both quality and accessibility?  If we want to serve this segment of the market, one that is extremely sensitive to price increases and income decreases, then we cannot rely on increasing our tuition fees for revenue growth.  Tuition at private tertiary institutions has been increasing annually at around seven to ten percent; incomes of the poor have not in any way grown as fast or even grown at all.  How then do we attract and keep the best faculty, provide adequate and appropriate facilities?

Since access and affordability are key goals, we have reduced education down to its most important, essential elements, the right facilities and learning material, a proper classroom, and a great teacher – nothing less, nothing more.   To control our costs, we have centralized backroom services such as accounting and human resource management.  We are not spending heavily on administration – choosing instead to use the same people, systems, and processes across the system.   Moreover, maximizing information technology, we have cut down on non-teaching personnel focusing resources on those at the front lines, the faculty.

Our education for this market is thus bare bones, no frills education.  We provide what is necessary for our students to learn the most that they can in order to achieve the goals most relevant to their situation, nothing more, nothing less.

It is PHINMA’s belief that making high quality education profitable and affordable AND servicing the poor are not separate objectives.  These are not different strands twined together; they are one and the same piece of string. Profit, drives our innovation; it drives our focus on the poor; it drives our obsession for academic quality.  On the other hand, high quality education at affordable tuition fees will draw the students in and thus drive our profitability.

Partnerships for Education

Friends, let me now come to the conclusion of this talk.  PBEd has helped put the spotlight on key levers for education reform, PHINMA Education Network is leading the way in making quality, affordable private education possible for those who need education the most,  and Rotary International, I am certain, has been pursuing various community-based projects for education.  Don’t you think a partnership of PBEd, PHINMA and Rotary International can be a more powerful constituency for effective action for education?  For helping rebuild our Philippine education system as a key strategy and vehicle to combat poverty?

Now, imagine that partnership to include 300 local government units partnered with Synergeia Foundation, over 1,000 public high schools connected to cyberspace by the Gilas Consortium, close to 2,000 schools and 70,000 teachers working with the Knowledge Channel, over a 100 NGOs for education belonging to E-Net, the UP and PNU main and satellite campuses, the four major private school associations under the COCOPEA umbrella, the huge network of outstanding teachers belonging to Metrobank’s NOTED, the thousands of teachers who have been mentored by mentors of the FWWPPI.  Imagine that and more.

Now, imagine that network working for an education roadmap in connection with national and local elections.  Imagine that network saying no to corruption in Philippine education.  Imagine that network providing the much needed warm bodies to watch over education-related procurement down to the school levels.  Imagine that network helping ensure that teachers focus only on teaching and recognizing outstanding performance.  Imagine that and more.

To get there, however, we must begin taking the first steps. I challenge you to affiliate Rotary International District 3780 with the 57-75 Reverse the Education Crisis Consortium or to partner with PBEd for the 1000 Teachers Program and Campaign.  Better yet, your district may want to become a member of PBEd! 

Thank you very much!  God bless our Filipino children!