THE United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of the Child states that every child in the world has the right to education.
This right, however, is being violated with impunity as the number of out-of-school-children and youth (OOSCY) swelled to 251 million worldwide in 2024, according to the UN’s UNESCO. The 2024 figure is 1 percent lower than 10 years ago.
The UNESCO blamed the almost stagnant situation to “chronic under-investment” in education by low-income countries, as it called on nations to “leverage innovative financing mechanisms such as debt-for-education swaps.”
The number of OOSCY has increased in the ASEAN region from 7 million in 2017 but pinning down a precise figure for 2024 remains a challenge due to “inconsistent data collection methods and varying national definitions.”
UNESCO defines an OOSCY as: children in the community who do not have access to school; children who have access to school but are not enrolled; children who are enrolled but are not in school or at risk of dropping out; and, children who are dropouts from the education system.
‘A growing army of out-of-school youths puts in doubt our ability to produce skilled and literate citizens that could join the workforce after.’
The rise in global OOSCY is partly attributed to factors like money problems, family matters, and lack of personal interest in education.
A 2020 national population census conducted by the Philippine Statistics Authority placed our own OOSCYs at 11 million aged between 5 and 24 years.
Majority or 68.5 percent of them were in the 20 to 24 age bracket, followed by 15 to 19-year-olds and in third, the 5 to 9-year-olds.
Region-wide, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had the highest OOSCY incidence of 45 percent, double the national average.
With the pandemic shutting down schools at the height of the global contagion, the country’s current OOSCY number could be staggering.
Education advocate and human rights lawyer Chel Diokno shone a spotlight last week on this problem as symptomatic of an “education crisis” that needs to be urgently addressed.
Diokno, whose party-list group won three seats in the May 12 midterm polls, said solving the education crisis does not end with a budget allocation and free tuition. Daily expense such as allowance, book fees and school supplies should also be accounted for.
According to the congressman-elect, the education sector is not even getting the right allocation of 6 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in accordance with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal.
The current education budget of P1.056 trillion represents only 4 percent of the GDP.
A growing army of out-of-school youths puts in doubt our ability to produce skilled and literate citizens that could join the workforce after.
For individuals, it often translates to limited opportunities, precarious employment in the informal sector, and vulnerability to exploitation. Without proper education and skills, their chances of breaking the cycle of poverty are significantly diminished.
The government’s current preoccupation with improving our literacy rate should also go hand in hand with the national goal to reduce the OOSCY population.
Recently, the Department of Budget and Management announced the creation of 16,000 new teaching positions for school year 2025-2026.
The Department of Education in December 2024 also signed a $1-million agreement with the Public-Private Partnership Center for the construction of 15,000 classrooms this year.
But even if we build more school buildings and hire new teachers, these will be all for naught if we can’t fill up our classrooms with warm bodies.
