The Philippines’ learning poverty will have economic costs in the future, prompting business groups to call on government to address this serious problem caused by the long lockdown.
Seeing that the country’s education system quality directly impacts the national gross domestic product, the private sector has a huge stake in accelerating the learning catchup, especially in providing the support that the learners and teachers need, the Philippine Business or Education (PBEd) and Management Association of the Philippines (MAP) said in a statement.
In a joint membership meeting, PBEd and MAP tackled the newly- launched Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP) report, which presents recommendations on how keep children learning during and post-pandemic. The GEEAP is an independent, cross-disciplinary body composed of leading education experts from around the world jointly convened by the World Bank, UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, and UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti.
Citing a report by the United Nations Children’s Fund, PBEd and MAP said more than 85 percent of Filipino students experience learning poverty which is defined by the World Bank as the share of 10-year-olds who cannot read or understand a simple story.
GEEAP recommends that the government first identify the learning gaps and adjust instruction to target the child’s level of learning. This is part of the Department of Education’s learning recovery program.
“Today’s generation of school children is estimated to suffer a $17 trillion loss in lifetime earnings if corrective action is not urgently taken. Learning losses due to school closures are one of the biggest global threats to education recovery. The Philippines is one of the top 10 countries worldwide with the longest academic break due to COVID-19 and 2.7 million students have lost over a year of in-person learning,” GEEAP co-chair Professor Kwame Akyeampong said in his keynote speech.
PBEd and MAP said government must act swiftly and immediate policy actions must be made to keep schools fully open, bring back children to school, diagnose the learning losses, and address the support needed by students, teachers, and parents, to address the learning poverty, the business groups said.
“The limited face-to-face classes have become a potent action step in halting learning regression. This means teachers can genuinely and accurately assess learning gaps, address them with appropriate remediation and intervention, and then proceed with communicating the learning content in an approach that is more adaptive to all learners.” said DepEd Assistant Secretary Alma Torio.
As of April 6, almost 19,000 schools are joining the progressive expansion of face-to-face classes catering to more than 4 million learners. Despite this, there are still almost 33,000 schools that have yet to satisfy the safety assessment tool requirements before they could be allowed to fully open.
Resuming face-to-face classes could help boost the country’s economy by P12 billion per week, according to the National Economic and Development Authority.
With this, PBEd and MAP have expressed their full commitment and support in working towards the education imperative. – Irma Isip
