Low School Retention Rates Among K-12 Students in the Philippines
Summary
In the Philippines, K-12 students have been struggling intergenerationally with the issue of low school retention rates which have detrimental consequences not only for their families, but for the country as a whole. Deepening the issue of low school retention rates are sociocultural factors that require children to stay home and work to provide for their families instead of going to school, children not seeing the value of school due to inadequate staffing of teachers and school materials, and ineffective reform due to the lack of communication and the corrupt government in the Philippines. Due to low school retention rates in the Philippines, the cycle of poverty does not cease and generations of families remain economically mobile, the work force becomes less skilled as students are dropping out of school, leaving their work capacities unrefined, and child labor continues to persist, leading to abuse of young children. Currently, there’s a nation-wide governmentally-funded program called Alternative Learning System that aims to provide education to students later in life through a remediation program. This allows students to still receive their education if they weren’t able to complete it during the regular allotted time. However, though this is a program that provides great opportunities for students, the program is poorly funded by the government and students still don’t have the materials that they need. Ultimately, there are solutions that are being put in place, but the execution has many gaps.
Key Terms
Out of school children: The main subjects of the school retention issue, these are K-12 age children who do not complete their primary and/or secondary education. Parents may pull their children out of school due to financial difficulties or agricultural labor demands to help sustain their family.[1] Currently, “there is a total of 36,238 students ages six to twenty-four who are out-of-school” in just the Division of Davao del Norte—a singular region out of the entire country.[2]
School dropout: Students are considered to be a “drop-out” if they discontinue school for any reason before earning certification of graduation or finishing their current course of study for a variety of reasons.. Failing to attend class for two weeks in a row, failing to enroll in school while already meeting the minimum age requirement, transferring schools, or leaving school for an extended period of time are all considered as various forms of students dropping out.[3]
DepEd: This is the education department in the Philippines, which is an abbreviated form of Department of Education. This department oversees all education policies and reform in this sector.
Poverty cycle: Also defined as a poverty trap, the cycle of poverty is when various systemic inequalities cause impoverished families to be stuck in their low socioeconomic state over a period of multiple generations. This issue continues to persist unless there are outside interventions implemented to directly target the root issues of these systemic inequalities.
Child labor: Not including household chores or services, child labor is “renumerated work by children or even if unpaid, work that results in the production of goods or services destined for the market.”[4]
Economic immobility: As the inability to move between social classes, economic immobility is the lack of capacity to change one’s financial situation.
Context
Q: How does the issue of low school retention rates differ in Philippines provinces as compared to urban areas?
Though DepEd makes national schooling policies, these policies are even more difficult to implement in provincial areas due to their lack of resources and access to necessary school services. In 2009, those in “rural communities, low-educated households and larger families were more likely to be living in poverty” and students from marginalized groups within these rural areas “including street children, children from indigenous communities and children with disabilities, appear more likely to be deprived of services (including access to school)” and “to experience social discrimination.”[5]Moreover, the issue of low school retention rates is deeper within provincial regions due to the increased lack of resources.
Q. Where is the issue of low school retention rates most prevalent in the Philippines?
Though low school retention rates is a national crisis in the Philippines, the issue is most prevalent for children that live in more rural areas in the Philippines. If a child lives in a rural town of village, they are “less likely to be at pace or advanced in school than children living in urban areas.”[6] Children that are residing in rural areas of the Philippines aren’t at the designated pace that they need be at to finish school in a timely manner because they aren’t attending their classes and keeping up with their schooling.
Q. When did low school retention rates become an issue in the Philippines?
Because the Philippines is in a poverty trap, or a situation where poverty is cyclical and intergenerational, low school retention rates have always been an issue in the Philippines. The issues of poverty and low-school retention rates are intertwined and affect each other, causing each issue to persist from generation to generation.
Q: What role does the Philippines government play in this issue of low school retention rates?
The Philippines government has attempted to resolve this issue, but has not been effective in doing so.
Q: How are we defining this issue in Philippines education?
This issue in Philippines education is linked to the overarching issue of poverty. Because students aren’t staying in school and focusing on working to provide for their families, this continues the cycle of poverty. From 2005 to 2013, “26% of elementary school students [dropped] out before the sixth grade, and 23% did not graduate from high school.” In 2016, “3.8 million Filipinos, or 1 in 10 of those within the age of 6 and 24, did not go to school” and over half of these individuals “come from the poorest families.” [7] Ultimately, this issue lies within the system of education, including those in positions of power.
Q: Who is the focus of this social problem?
The K-12 students are the focus of this social issue as they are directly impacted by their education. Their teachers’ education and capability can also play key factors.
Contributing Factors
#1 - Sociocultural factors require students stay with their families rather than go to school
Firstly, a key factor influencing children to not receive their education is dependence on financial capability. For example, Nagpana children in the Philippines going to high school every day is very dependent on their financial status. Several families do not have the resources to pay for the bus fare in going to high school, especially while traveling along rugged roads. During typhoon season, it’s too dangerous for children to travel to school because there’s no bridge that can take them to their school buildings. Students’ families also don’t have enough money to buy materials for their school projects.[8] Because of their lack of resources, school attendance doesn’t seem to be worth it.
On top of not being able to afford to go to school, students are also expected to work on their families’ property. Farming is the primary occupation of those in this specific area of the Philippines, which seems much more attractive than going to school because there is immediate gratification through work rather than going through laborious measures to attend school. Other barriers to attend school are needing to work for other families to have the means to attend, and helping parents in household duties. Overall, in the eyes of these students and their families, there’s more value in working than receiving an education that takes such an intense amount of effort.
#2 - Inadequate teacher staffing, training, school materials, and social services in rural areas
Another challenge that poses a threat to students’ wellbeing in school is the several inadequacies in their schooling environment. Though education is important, its quality is poor—characterized by “poor performance in international comparative tests in science and math, unpreparedness of some, if not most, high school graduates to take on the rigors of academic life in college, and skills and competencies of graduates that inadequately match industry needs.”[9] The reason why the quality of students’ performance is so poor is because classrooms simply aren’t prepared to accommodate students.
For one, there is no official K-12 basic education curriculum. Because there is this lack of organization in students’ formalized schooling, this lack of structure perpetuates ideas into students that schooling shouldn’t take priority in their lives. Secondly, if this K-12 program were to eventually be implemented, it would require 103,599 more teachers. Currently, there’s a shortage of teachers due to budget constraints already. Now, it is evident that schooling in the Philippines aren’t adequately prepared to sufficiently cater to students’ needs, creating an environment of failure as they try to compete in literacy tests.
#3 - Corrupt government causing inadequate reform
One huge barrier that exacerbates low school retention rates is the Philippines government– specifically their Department of Education– due to the lack of effective school reform. Because of the corruption of the Philippines government, efficacy in school reform simply has not been able to exist. This corruption is characterized by internal mechanisms in this system. In the past, there have been several implementations of education reform, but failed due to, “(1) Absence of a shared commitment to a common goal; (2) Conflicting individual interests; (3) Perceptions of inequity in the sharing of effort, costs, and benefits; (4) Exaggerated self-assessment of competence, or the lack of it; and (5) Differences in status and authority, which hinder meaningful debates and the free flow of information.”[10]Essentially, even though there have been many attempts on part of DepEd to make education better, it was conflict within their organization that prevented adequate change to occur. Because these efforts aren’t effective, students are still dropping out of schools because the system still isn’t fit to suit their needs.
Back in 2005, a reform agenda in the Philippines was formulated. This agenda has a set list of goals that specifically targeted those who needed their basic education and universal completion of this education was to be mandated, thus creating a track for success. However, this agenda was created by outside policy-makers independent of the DepEd, creating an issue of power. Because these individuals aren’t in the internal organization of DepEd, government officials were reluctant to accept proposals or reforms. Again, because needs of students aren’t being met by those in positions of power that can control the environment they’re in, they have no motivation to continue in school, resulting in low retention rates.
Aside from reform, this corrupt government prevents the current system from working properly as well. In regards to the distribution of essential supplies to rural areas such as textbooks, vaccines and medicine, “service providers often face delays or even failure” in the acquisition of these materials; these delays continue to be “aggravated by poor planning and limited technical capacity to forecast demand” which perpetuates the continual underspending on social service budgets.[11] Without these essential materials, students don’t have what they need to effectively study, and neither are their basic healthcare needs met, causing drop-out rates to increase because they simply are not able to keep up. Further deepening the issue, government corruption and disorganization prevents its current system from moving forward as well as preventing it from staying stagnant in its current state. The needs of students and their families are not being met, thus increasing their vulnerability.
Negative Consequences
#1 - Economic immobility due to exacerbation of the poverty cycle
Because students in the Philippines aren’t staying in school and getting the education they need to rise in socioeconomic class, their lack of education results in the continuation of national poverty crisis. Already, in 2009, children from “rural communities, low-educated households and larger families were more likely to be living in poverty.”[12] Students in rural communities are poor because they live far from the city, where resources and services are offered. Their parents also most likely have a low-level of education since they too weren’t exposed to resources and services to aid them in school. Ultimately, because of these conditions that these low-educated families in rural communities are in, they only qualify for certain types of low paying jobs and aren’t able to branch out to earn more income. On top of this, when these low-educated individuals are part of large families, resources are spread even more thin with so many individuals to provide for. Resulting from these conditions is the poverty trap due to the inability to change their social class.
Ultimately, this cycle comes from satisfying the short term needs of money rather than putting investment into education that would cause economic mobility into a higher socioeconomic class. In order to change one’s socioeconomic class, there must be investment in human capital—the “stock of competencies, knowledge, habits, social, and personality attributes”—through receiving an education. Without investment in human capital, there is no opportunity for economic development and they “render output of great economic value upon their participation in the labor force.” [13]Ultimately, children who do not stay in school throughout their entire K-12 years will continue their family’s poverty into the next generation because they are not able to follow the formula for economic development, meaning they will continue to struggle without access to essential resources that come with higher jobs and schooling.
#2 – Less competent and skilled labor force
Without the completion of their education, students who sacrifice school in order to work causes a less competent and less skilled future labor force. When children neglect their studies, they become “deficient in skills and competencies” that are required for a higher position in the labor force.[14] Because these children lack schooling experience that would help them work productively for higher level businesses, the future of the work force is threatened by a decrease in work capacities. Overall, they are far less prepared for their careers.
In rural areas of the Philippines, “there is an acceptance in the traditional social and cultural norms to have children work” rather than receive an education. Because it’s more socially acceptable for children to work, many markets exploit these children for the use of cheap labor. As these children are very young, “they are always easily manageable due to their youth, blind obedience, and ignorance of their rights,” so these markets continue to exploit them to do adult jobs for a lesser cost. Since all these children know is that they’re receiving more income, they’ll continue to sacrifice school for work because it seems much more immediate—even though they are missing out on skills that could help them gain higher positions in the future. Ultimately, this temporary fix doesn’t just hurt these former students and their families as they continue along the poverty cycle, but each child lost to exploitation contributes to the lowered productivity of the labor force in the Philippines as a whole.
#3- Child labor
Because K-12 students are dropping out of school in order to provide for their families, there are large amounts of children being exploited for cheap labor. As a result of their exploitation, they suffer many forms of psychological and emotional damage. Low school retention rates directly lead to this consequence because families expect their children to contribute to their household income. These households are “likely to be headed by individuals with low levels of education,” causing them to not understand the value of investing in education for their children for a higher future income and instead settling for a lower and immediate wage that would benefit the whole family on a short-term basis.[15] Because impoverished families’ resources “are not sufficient to allow them to meet subsistence needs” pressure falls upon their children to contribute their work and income to meet their families’ needs, causing each child to be deprived of their childhood due to psychological trauma from the labor they’re forced to undertake.
Back in 1995, “a total of 17.5 million children aged 5-14” were exploited for child labor, and among these children, 70% were in poor rural areas. Most females worked in domestic services while a significant number of males worked in hazardous occupations such as mining, quarrying, and construction sites. Not only are these children being exploited for extra money, but they are doing so on a regular basis to provide a steady and reliable flow of money. Because of this continual exploitation out of a family’s desperation for income, “the child is exposed to various forms of abuse” such as “slavery, prostitution, illegal activities” that ultimately contribute to the endangerment to the health, safety, and morals of each child. Moreover, when parents put pressure on their children to help provide for their family and sacrifice their education, former students’ potential for a bright future is obliterated by lack of necessary skills and knowledge, the need to fulfill the only job they qualify for, as well as psychological damage from the pressure to continue to provide for their families despite the abusive conditions they must endure.
Best Practices
Practice:
In the Philippines, second chance schooling is provided to marginalized learners. This acts as a remediation program for education so that students who were not able to complete their schooling earlier in life have the chance to do so later on. This qualifies students for better jobs which allows them to start to escape the intergenerational poverty trap that they were initially born in. A program called Alternative Learning System is a governmentally funded education program that allows students to have this flexibility in their learning. With this program that Alternative Learning System follows, students’ education becomes more “participatory, transformative, and responsive to the circumstances of its learners,” ultimately making their learning more accessible.[16]
Impact:
Beyond the classroom, Alternative Learning System students continued to engage with their education. Through social media—specifically a Facebook group—children are able to share materials that they would not otherwise have access to. Through this, students have the opportunity to be exposed to diverse ways of receiving education. Due to the formal and nonformal learning that is utilized by Alternative Learning System, this program was able to improve the functional literacy rate and school participation rate. Ultimately, this approach to education gave students opportunities to pursue their education in nonconventional ways that were still effective. Even inmates are able to learn, change, and achieve as services from Alternative Learning System were brought to them.[17]
Gaps:
Though this problem is a great starting point for students to receive a form of education instead of completely dropping out, this is a mere back-up plan for low retention rates rather than actually helping children stay in school. Along with this, “only 2% of the potential ALS learners were served, and only a small percentage pass the A&E test and are able to obtain an elementary or high school diploma. While there is an impact, ALS lacks the resources necessary to fully cater to each student’s learning individually and needs more resources to expand its outreach and efficiently benefit each student’s education. Recommended solutions are social marketing, increasing budgetary allocation, and increasing public-private partnerships.[18]
Key Takeaways
There are several things that have been done to target the issue of low school retention rates in the Philippines, but because reform is not well executed, no solution has been effective enough to directly target this issue.
If the issue of low school retention rates isn’t fixed, not only will there be negative economic consequences for impoverished individuals, but the issue of child labor will continue to persist, resulting in unmanaged physical and emotional abuse in the child population.
Lack of accessibility to education isn’t only detrimental to specific impoverished families, but the country’s work-force as a whole as children do not receive the necessary skills they need to provide essential contributions to the work force.
Although education is a worthy and essential investment, the cyclical aspect of the poverty cycle makes it difficult to invest in it.
References
Abocejo, Ferdinand Tesado. 2014. Review of Child Labor, Poverty and School Attendance: Evidences from the Philippines by Region. CNU Journal of Higher Education 8 (December): 114–27.
Abulencia, Arthur S. 2015. “The Unraveling of K-12 Program as an Education Reform in the Philippines.” SIPATAHOENAN: South-East Asian Journal for Youth, Sports & Health Education, 1, no. 2 (October): 229-240.
Aldon, Eva T., et al. “Sociocultural Factors Influencing Adaptation Capacity of Indigenous People in Barotac Viejo, West Central Philippines.” Open Journal of Social Sciences, vol. 04, no. 01, 2016, pp. 45–54, https://doi.org/10.4236/jss.2016.41006. Accessed 26 June 2020.
Arzadon, Maria Mercedes, and Rogelio Nato. “The Philippine Alternative Learning System: Expanding the Educational ...” Accessed April 6, 2023. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria-Mercedes-Arzadon/publication/330881893_THE_PHILIPPINE_ALTERNATIVE_LEARNING_SYSTEM_EXPANDING_THE_EDUCATIONAL_FUTURE_OF_THE_DEPRIVED_DEPRESSED_AND_UNDERSERVED/links/5c59a41b92851c48a9bbf2f6/THE-PHILIPPINE-ALTERNATIVE-LEARNING-SYSTEM-EXPANDING-THE-EDUCATIONAL-FUTURE-OF-THE-DEPRIVED-DEPRESSED-AND-UNDERSERVED.pdf.
Asis, Maruja M.B., and Cecilia Ruiz-Marave. “Leaving a Legacy: Parental Migration and School Outcomes among Young Children in the Philippines.” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 22, no. 3 (2013): 349–75. https://doi.org/10.1177/011719681302200303.
David, Clarissa C., and Jose Ramon G. Albert. 2015. “Recent trends in out-of-school children in the Philippines.” PIDS Discussion Paper Series 2015, no. 51 (n/a): 19. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/173517.
International, Coram. “Situation Analysis of Children in the Philippines.” Oct. 2018.
Parreño, Samuel John. 2022. “School Dropouts in the Philippines: Causes, Changes and Statistics.” Sapienza: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 4 (1): e23002. https://doi.org/10.51798/sijis.v4i1.552.
Rose, Maria, and S Sergio. K-12 Education Reform: Problems and Prospects. Vol. IX, 2011, pp. 70–80, www.adnu.edu.ph/urc/download/p070p080.pdf.
Timbal, Maricel A. 2019. “Analysis of Student-At-Risk of Dropping out (SARDO) Using Decision Tree: An Intelligent Predictive Model for Reduction.” International Journal of Machine Learning and Computing 9 (3): 273–78. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijmlc.2019.9.3.798.
Villamil, Winfred M. 2002. Review of Determinants, Consequences, and Policy Implications of Child Labor in the Philippines. The Philippine Review of Economics 39 (1655-1516): 111–63.
About alternative learning system. Department of Education. (n.d.). Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.deped.gov.ph/k-to-12/inclusive-education/about-alternative-learning-system/
[1] (Peer-Reviewed Source) David, Clarissa C., and Jose Ramon G. Albert. 2015. “Recent trends in out-of-school children in the Philippines.”
[2] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Timbal, Maricel A. 2019. “Analysis of Student-At-Risk of Dropping out (SARDO) Using Decision Tree: An Intelligent Predictive Model for Reduction.” International Journal of Machine Learning and Computing 9 (3): 273–78.
[3] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Parreño, Samuel John. 2022. “School Dropouts in the Philippines: Causes, Changes and Statistics.” Sapienza: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 4 (1): e23002.
[4] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Villamil, Winfred M. 2002. Review of Determinants, Consequences, and Policy Implications of Child Labor in the Philippines. The Philippine Review of Economics 39 (1655-1516): 111–63.
[5] (Peer-Reviewed Source) International, Coram. “Situation Analysis of Children in the Philippines.” Oct. 2018.
[6] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Asis, Maruja M.B., and Cecilia Ruiz-Marave. “Leaving a Legacy: Parental Migration and School Outcomes among Young Children in the Philippines.”
[7] Parreño, Samuel John. 2022. “School Dropouts in the Philippines: Causes, Changes and Statistics.” Sapienza: International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies 4 (1): e23002.
[8] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Aldon, Eva T., et al. “Sociocultural Factors Influencing Adaptation Capacity of Indigenous People in Barotac Viejo, West Central Philippines.”
[9] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Rose, Maria, and S Sergio. K-12 Education Reform: Problems and Prospects.
[10] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Abulencia, Arthur S. 2015. “The Unraveling of K-12 Program as an Education Reform in the Philippines.”
[11] International, Coram. “Situation Analysis of Children in the Philippines.” Oct. 2018.
[12] International, Coram. “Situation Analysis of Children in the Philippines.” Oct. 2018.
[13] (Peer-Reviewed Source) Abocejo, Ferdinand Tesado. 2014. Review of Child Labor, Poverty and School Attendance: Evidences from the Philippines by Region. CNU Journal of Higher Education 8 (December): 114–27.
[14] Abocejo, Ferdinand Tesado. 2014. Review of Child Labor, Poverty and School Attendance: Evidences from the Philippines by Region. CNU Journal of Higher Education 8 (December): 114–27.
[15] Villamil, Winfred M. 2002. Review of Determinants, Consequences, and Policy Implications of Child Labor in the Philippines. The Philippine Review of Economics 39 (1655-1516): 111–63.
[16](Peer-Reviewed Source) Arzadon, Maria Mercedes, and Rogelio Nato. “The Philippine Alternative Learning System: Expanding the Educational ...”
[17] Arzadon, Maria Mercedes, and Rogelio Nato. “The Philippine Alternative Learning System: Expanding the Educational ...”
[18] Arzadon, Maria Mercedes, and Rogelio Nato. “The Philippine Alternative Learning System: Expanding the Educational ...”
