IT takes a village to raise a child.
This age-old proverb – which means an entire community should interact and help educate a child – summarizes challenges raised in a recent study by the Philippine Institute of Development Studies (PIDS) showing that despite significant investments poured by government, early childhood care and development (ECCD) in the Philippines face numerous problems, ranging from inadequate facilities to quality of day care workers.
The 71-page study, “Behind the Slow Start: An Assessment of Early Childhood Care and Development in the Philippines,” showed that despite the national government’s efforts to increase fiscal space for early childhood education, facilitated by funding from the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor) which has allotted P4.25 billion over the years, much remains to be done to fully address the problems.
While the national government’s efforts were complemented by similar investments of local government units (LGUs), there remains an urgent need for strategic intervention measures to improve participation rates in early education and essential health and nutrition services, increase public spending on ECCD, and address governance challenges, the study said.
Among the challenges noted in the study are the low participation in early childhood education among children aged 3 to 4 years despite the passage of laws such as the Kindergarten Education Act of 2013, Enhanced Basic Education Act, and the Early Years Act of 2013.
“Disparities in participation rates in early childhood education are evident across different regions of the Philippines. The lowest participation rates in pre-kindergarten programs are observed in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, where less than 5 percent of children are enrolled, compared to almost 40 percent in the Ilocos region,” the PIDS study showed.
It also showed that participation rates remain relatively low even in affluent areas such as Calabarzon and the National Capital Region.
“This disparity challenges the notion that higher regional income levels necessarily translate to increased access to early education, highlighting the presence of other barriers or factors influencing participation rates,” it added.
INADEQUATE FACILITIES
The PIDS study also said that inadequate facilities hamper access to ECCD, thereby limiting children’s opportunities for learning and development.
Under Republic Act 6972, or the Act Establishing a Day Care Center in every Barangay,” each barangay should have a Child Development Center, or CDC.
While the PIDS study showed that 89 percent of municipalities and cities in the country meet the CDC and Day Care Development Center (DCC) requirement, “poorer municipalities exhibited lower ratios than wealthier first-class municipalities and highly urbanized cities.”
“While this suggests equitable access to CDCs and DCCs across the country, the barangay ratio may need to accurately reflect the actual supply level relative to the population,” it said.
The study also said that the current supply of capital investments for ECCD needs to be increased to meet the goal of universal access for children aged 3 to 4 to ECCD services.
“The current facilities are short of around 33,000 to meet the 96,000 child development centers required to meet 100 percent of the demand. This requires about P95 billion in capital investments to ensure that facilities meet the standard of a National Child Development Center (NCDC),” it said.
DAYCARE WORKERS
The study noted that a well-trained and adequately compensated teaching staff, ideally holding a bachelor’s degree with specialization in early childhood education, is also a major factor in the delivery of ECCD services.
It said the Philippines needs to increase by three-fold, or 240,000, its 89,000 daycare/child development workers to equip the system for universal access of children.
It also noted that about 50 percent of child development workers are only high school graduates, while the rest are college graduates.
It said, though, that the distribution of college graduates who are daycare and/or child development workers “varies across local governments and is also influenced by income class, with cities and first municipalities having a higher proportion of college-educated daycare workers.”
Likewise, the study said there is no standard salary among daycare or child development workers, and the compensation varies among local government units.
The study showed that funding from the national government is not enough and numerous forms of intervention in health, nutrition and early education are passive, merely filling the financing gap in LGUs, and are not designed for them to mobilize more resources or use them to achieve the desired goal or outcomes.
“In essence, these national grants do not stimulate proactive investment by LGUs. Consequently, passive financing from the national government may foster dependency among LGUs and fail to ensure the sustainability of ECCD financing,” the study added.
To remedy the challenges, the study said the government should roll out innovative financing mechanisms to improve participation in early childhood education, invest in science-based behavioral change communication campaigns, increase public spending on ECCD, and improve efficiency by investing resources that dramatically affect health, nutrition, and early education outcomes.
It also called on the national government to leverage national resources to LGU spending on ECCD, and invest more in primary health care.
Lastly, it called for a reevaluation of the school feeding program based on a comprehensive understanding of its advantages.
All these things, the study showed, would ensure a better village in which a child will be able to realize his or her full potential.
