Our country has gone through many changes and development for the past few years. Direction is a defining element of change. This continuous process made great impacts in the lives  of Filipinos. Relatively, the changes have given us advantages and also the disadvantages it brought causing downfall to many people. There are numerous questions concerning the issues and problems existing in the Philippine Educational System as to how we can resolve it the best way we could to attain that kind of quality of education we have been searching and longing for. Where do we begin and how do we respond to such?

         
          As a junior high school student who studies in a public school, I had some observations that would contain a lot of generalization to all public and private school students. For the past couple of years, our government’s budget for education is about P553 billion or even more. This is supposedly used for making the Philippine educational system better for all students and teachers. Even in that amount of money, our education system is still failing. Some of the major problems our educational system are:

 1. Public schools are generally underfunded. I do not know if it is because of corruption or simply mismanagement of funds but we  have  schools that does not have proper ventilation and lighting systems. Schools that are not internet-connected and with barely working computers. Schools that are right beside highways and are just too noisy for learning.  Also, many private schools pay really low.

 

 

 

 

 

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. Teachers are often not properly trained for the task. We have English teachers teaching Filipino and Social Studies especially in elementary. We are not getting the proper people to teach them because teachers are not paid well.

3. The culture of ignorance is perpetuated - under trained teachers churn out under educated children and some of these children would eventually become educators.

4. Filipinos value education for the wrong reasons . It is often connected to high returns and rarely because of interest . We cannot afford first world idealism of going for what we want or dream of. We go for what is practical, what would make more money as soon as possible.

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          Nevertheless, I still have hope that when the time comes or when we finally see the real progress, the Philippine educational system shall rise. These are some of the solutions that I thought:

1. Every school should have a full, balanced, and rich curriculum, including the arts, science, history, literature, civics, geography, foreign languages, mathematics, and physical education.

2. Reduce class sizes to improve student achievement and behavior.

3. Eliminate high-stakes standardized testing and rely instead on assessments that allow students to demonstrate what they know and can do.

4. Provide the medical and social services that poor children need to keep up with their advantaged peers.

             
           The Philippines must realize that education is not a way to get ahead in life. We must realize that poverty is one of the major causes that hurts education so much and our government must take this problem seriously.