Education Secretary Juan Edgardo "Sonny" M. Angara is eyeing to tap additional concessional financing through cheap loans and grants extended by the Philippines' development partners as well as tycoons' deep pockets, to fund more classroom construction while addressing learning loss among Filipino school kids aggravated by class disruptions during bad weather.
Separately, the Washington-based multilateral lender World Bank disclosed on Nov. 4 it will lend $150 million (over P8.7 billion) to the Philippines in May 2025 for the Department of Education's (DepEd) new Project for Learning Upgrade Support.
"We're really planning to address some of the department's resource gaps through ODA [official development assistance], because we found out that the DepEd is only number eight in terms of ODA recipients, and with just one percent of the pie" of foreign-backed financing, Angara told reporters in a chance interview last week.
Angara noted that government agencies rolling out big-ticket physical infrastructure projects such as the departments of Public Works and Highways (DPWH), of Transportation (DOTr) and of Finance (DOF) cornered up to 76 percent of Philippine ODA proceeds.
"It's time to do more for human infrastructure and human capital," Angara said.
The World Bank was the first to spotlight concerns about learning poverty in the Philippines, citing in a landmark 2021 report that nine out of every 10 pupils aged 10 could neither read nor understand a simple text.
In its latest disclosure, the World Bank said its forthcoming investment project financing for DepEd is aimed at improving the quality of public elementary, as well as lower-secondary, education across the country.
"The most critical challenge facing the Philippines' education system is on the current low learning outcomes," the World Bank pointed out, also citing the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) results in 2022 showing about four-fifths of 15-year-old Filipino students scoring below the minimum proficiency level in the subjects of mathematics, reading and science.
Even the DepEd's own National Achievement Test (NAT) administered to Grades 6 and 10 students nationwide to determine their proficiency in core subjects such as Filipino language, English language, mathematics, science and social studies had shown 85 to 99 percent of Grade 10 examinees "do not reach proficient levels," the World Bank noted.
"Low learning outcomes can be traced to inadequate learning conditions, as measured by teacher's capacity, classroom environment, and availability of learning materials... Overcrowded classrooms and inequitable deployment of teachers with sufficient qualifications are issues in certain regions; whereby regions with higher poverty incidences tend to have poorer teacher quality, while highly urbanized regions have worse student-classroom ratios.
"While textbook availability impacts test scores positively, only a little over 70 percent of Grade 5 children have textbooks of their own, and eight percent share with more than two other learners," the World Bank lamented.
As such, the upcoming World Bank loan will support learning acceleration and teaching; enhance assessments that measure education outcomes; as well as strengthen the education system by evaluation, management and monitoring.
The Manila-based Asian Development Bank (ADB), meanwhile, had warned about P1.9 trillion in economic losses yearly at the height of the most stringent pandemic-induced lockdowns which closed schools and stopped learning for quite a long time.
Bilaterally, the governments of Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United States, especially through their respective aid agencies, support education initiatives in the country.
"They're willing, actually. The past administrations were somewhat reluctant, I think, to avail" of ODA for the education sector, the DepEd chief noted.
"If you look at the borrowing pie of the Philippines, we borrow so much, but we spend so little on education... Of course, we need physical infrastructure, but we also need human infrastructure. Because we have a young population -- if we don't invest in education, how will our bridges and roads be put to good use?" he pointed out.
In the case of public classrooms, Angara lamented that the annual national budget could only allocate 6,000 per year, even as the current classroom deficit is 165,000 and growing.
The administration is also tapping public-private partnerships (PPPs) to build more classrooms, as Angara disclosed that President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. two weeks ago already instructed the Private Sector Advisory Council (PSAC) to gauge private-sector interest.
Citing information from PPP Center Executive Director Cynthia C. Hernandez, Angara said Megawide Construction Corp. is still interested to again embark on classroom PPPs, similar to the project awarded to that company during the Benigno Aquino III administration.
Angara said classroom PPP projects may pick up the slack among real-estate players facing a construction slowdown and lower property market demand caused by, among others, the government's ban on Philippine offshore gaming operators (POGOs).
The joint Education Finance Watch 2024 report of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the World Bank published last week showed that out-of-pocket spending by Filipino families on education-related expenses are five times as much as households in Thailand, reflecting that developing or poorer countries tend to burden consumers with education expenditures more than developed and richer nations.
According to another World Bank report titled "Choosing Our Future: Education for Climate Action" published in September, students in the Philippines experienced at least 23 episodes of climate-related school closures from January 2022 to June 2024 -- a frequency that the lender described as "quite dramatic."
"In the Philippines, over 21 percent of schools are flooded at least once every school year, and this can happen twice a month in some areas," the World Bank noted.
Also in the Philippines, "cyclones in 2009 and 2013 damaged 4,300 and 19,300 schools, respectively, leading to extended school closures," it added, referring to the string of strong typhoons passing through the country.
"As the incidence of extreme weather events continues to increase, so does the likelihood of these school closures," the World Bank warned.
In an earlier chance interview, Angara told Manila Bulletin that cancelled classes in the Philippines, on the average, add up to 30 to 40 days out of the 180 school days, even as "extreme cases" of prolonged bad weather reached as many as 50 days of no classes.
When the powerful typhoon "Kristine" battered Luzon last month, preliminary reports to Angara revealed up to 1,200 schools damaged, affecting about a hundred thousand students.
The World Bank report also lamented that more than 10,000 classrooms are damaged by typhoons and flooding in the country yearly.
It did not help that both Angara and the World Bank cited that some school buildings and classrooms are being used as evacuation centers during times of calamities.
Angara said around 1,000 schools temporarily provided shelter to families affected by "Kristine" last month.
Filipino teachers are also burdened by climate shocks, as the World Bank lamented they are "even expected to take additional responsibilities to coordinate schools as shelters and provide make-up classes on Saturdays following flooding events, without receiving any additional compensation or recognition," which the lender warned "can easily lead to teacher burnout, absenteeism and for teachers to eventually leave their jobs."
Angara related that he had discovered a DepEd order wherein suspended work among government employees, including teachers, also meant suspended classes in public schools -- even hybrid or online learning, unlike in private educational institutions.
"I guess the assumption there is, if work and classes are suspended, even the teachers cannot deliver. But if you look at the experience in Metro Manila, as long as the internet connection is fine, hybrid and online classes can be done," the DepEd chief explained.
"So we're going to review that policy," he added.
While Angara is pushing for make-up classes, especially online and distance shifts to mitigate learning loss wrought by extreme weather events, the World Bank cited that "even online participation can be affected -- overall participation on an online learning platform for undergraduate and graduate school courses decreased by 20 percent due to two major typhoon events that affected the Philippines in 2020."
Still, the World Bank found out that in the Philippines, India, Kenya, Nepal and Uganda, "phone-based targeted instruction significantly improved learning by delivering up to four years of quality instruction for every $100 spent," underscoring the need to strengthen remote learning to that school kids continue to learn despite climate-related class disruptions.
Also, "school feeding programs can keep students enrolled through climate shocks and offset some of their indirect impacts by improving nutrition and health," the World Bank said, citing that Filipino school children who are enrolled in early-childhood nutrition programs "performed significantly better in school and $1 invested in these programs produced a $3-gain in academic achievement."