020 Equity First, Quality Later
I’ve long argued that the national government, sans a dramatic budget increase, has to prioritize equity over quality in public education (including previous blogs, entitled “Equity v. Quality” 1 and 2). And if my previous presentations fail to convince you, consider this one.
I had the privilege to return to the central office of the education department several years back, and close to a decade since I worked there as a policy adviser of the education secretary. This time, I was to represent City Savings Bank, where I served as a member of the board of directors, to turn over to the department the bank’s donation for victims of the Marawi siege.
After the simple ceremonies, we had a short chat with the department’s representative, Undersecretary Tony Umali, who, when asked by then CitySavings president Lino Abacan how else the bank can support the education department, responded that their default ask consists of five items: (1) classrooms, (2) computers, (3) good teachers (so more teacher training), (4) chairs, and (5) toilets. At least, that’s how I remembered his short list.
What’s interesting, however, is how Umali immediately added that what he wanted to ask the bank to address was a particular concern of a public school in Leyte. The school, he explained, needed a perimeter wall, so, if possible, maybe the bank can provide such wall, or even a temporary fence.
This, in my mind, was a fair request. It’s not like he’s asking for money for a beautification project, money that could be better spent in other, more meaningful reform initiatives. As was detailed, the school badly needs the requested barrier.
But this only highlights my point. That the education department—despite the massive increase in its budget over the last decade—can hardly cope with the need to address basic equity requirements like classrooms, chairs… toilets… and now, a perimeter wall…that it has to ask the last one from private sector donors.
Quality reforms, out of necessity, will forever take the back seat.
Of course, by providing these resources to schools, we are already improving quality.
But we shouldn’t delude ourselves that we have solved the quality problem simply because there are a few more computers in a school, or toilets…
We should therefore stop thinking that we are already solving the quality problems of schools with the resources given to them—equitably.
This is why, I think, it makes perfect sense to empower schools to chart their own destiny, of course, through genuine school based management.
If you think about it, a school’s ability to improve has nothing to do with another school’s ability to succeed, that is, if you take away the equity issue. As schools share—equitably—the limited MOOE government can afford for everyone, schools must find ways to improve on its own, irrespective of other schools’ needs and performance, and irrespective of the limited resources provide them.
As the education department worries about equity, schools should worry about their own quality, and they should be given the power to implement their own quality reform initiatives.
That said, we can only pray that each school knows what to do to make true quality education a reality.