THE TALE OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER

17 May 2025

My barkada (clique) calls me Rina—we are teachers in a public school in Manila who meet after class to exchange gossip about school and our students.* Mostly, though, these meetings are really griping sessions, I suppose, to let off steam from the many frustrations we must endure to simply get on with what we otherwise love doing. For example, the other day, I recounted to my barkada that I was again called to the principal’s office. Our conversation went this way:

P: You do know that you have again failed almost everyone in your class? 

R:  Sir, I simply gave them a simple reading and vocabulary test. It was an easy exercise, but almost all flunked! They just didn’t understand a word!

P: Bakit hindi mo Tagalugin? (Why don't you use Tagalog?)

R: But, Sir, my subject is English. How can I pass them when they do not understand even a simple English text? And it is not only the language. Many of them just don’t know how to read. And those who can read don’t understand what they are reading—English or Tagalog! Remember, they are already in 7th Grade!

P: No, I think it’s the teacher factor. May I remind you that we all get bonus money from DepEd (Department of Education) based on our promotions? Also, many parents of your students are complaining that you’re very strict! You young teachers, just because you have passed the professional licensure exam, you think you know it all.

With a smirk, obviously displeased that I had answered him back, he asked me to leave. My eyes were brimming with tears as I sought Alexa, who is not a member of our barkada but is nonetheless my trusted friend. She was three years my senior when we were together at St. Mary's College, and I idolised her. She is so smart she could easily have taught in a private school, but decided to stay here in our local National High School to teach the less privileged children.

By way of background, our school has about 3,000 students. We are small when compared to the national student population of more than 20 million—about 18 million in public schools, i.e., funded by government, and 2 million in private schools. Most of us are all cramped into rooms meant to accommodate far fewer students. This is another reason we have difficulty teaching properly. My class, for example, has about 50 students. We are separated from the next classroom consisting of another 50 or 60 students by a comparatively small, movable blackboard; the sound level makes it often impossible to be heard, especially with people chatting at the far end of the room that’s difficult to reach because of chairs leaning against the side walls. Also, we usually have three shifts of classes per day, and mine is too early for some students, so there is a great deal of absenteeism.

I finally found Alexa in the canteen. I had expected her to be sympathetic, but when I told her about my conversation with the principal, I was surprised that she defended him!

“You actually can’t blame him, Rina,” Alexa asserted. “We teachers, our principal and supervisors—we have needs too. The promotion bonus helps a long way, especially since, as you know, the salaries of teachers have been very low and stagnant for some years now**. On top of that, we sometimes take it upon ourselves to buy pens, notebooks, and other school supplies for children who can afford them even less. Kasi kawawa naman sila. (One feels sorry for them). As for the school facilities, do you know, I hear that in the province, it is not unusual for schools to ask their students to bring their own plastic chairs!”

I was unconvinced, “I know what you mean, but what do you say about students in high school not knowing how to read, or not understanding what they read? It is the system—the way the schools are run—it is just too hard for me to understand. The more teachers accept the bonus system, the more we are perpetuating it!”

“If you really want to help,” continued Alexa, “come after school and meet some others who think as you do.”

For the next few weeks, I observed how Alexa and some other teachers voluntarily tutored children through special classes. They grouped students according to abilities in reading and comprehension, and then developed ways to maximally help these differentiated learners. It was plodding work for both teachers and students, but it paid dividends. Their students did learn some skills and improved their scores in exams. And the teachers felt less guilty about the mass promotions at the end of the school year.

Source: Rappler, bit.ly/rapplerpublicschool

It was too late for me to join the ongoing remedial classes. Instead, I was asked to wait until the next school year. Meanwhile, I was eager to do my own little project, helping one student in my 7th Grade class. I selected Bugoy—he sat at the front of the classroom, and always seemed eager, although he was one of those who could read but without comprehension. I asked him how he could have survived all these years in elementary school. He simply copied assignments and test answers and didn’t tell his teachers. (I am sure his teachers knew.) All in all, it seemed to me that Bugoy wanted to better himself, and I decided to give him a chance.

Firstly, I asked him to stay after school. This was a great sacrifice not only for him but also for his family. Every after school, Bugoy would go to a garbage dump and collect recyclable bottles, plastics, and empty cartons, and sell them to a junk shop near where his family lived. He could earn as much as a hundred pesos a day (US$2.00)—sometimes even more—a tidy sum he would give his mother as pantulong (aid). She worked as manicurista who went door-to-door in the slums.

In no time, I noticed that Bugoy had a questioning mind. I wanted this intellectual curiosity to be a motivating force that would drive his interest in reading comprehension. I recently heard an interview with a celebrity who said he always had a thirst for knowledge and that his one regret in life was that he didn’t have the opportunity to go to university. But he made up for this lack of schooling by becoming a voracious reader. I, too, wanted to mitigate this lack of opportunity for Bugoy.

Months passed. When we started, Bugoy knew how to read a-ba-ca-da style. I agree that this Tagalog material is a good reading primer because it is more phonetic than English. So the first month, we concentrated on reading proficiency a-ba-ca-da style. But I wanted Bugoy to also know some English. Learning English would help him with competition: he would get a better salary in industry whilst exposing himself to a wider worldview. His dream was to be a contract worker abroad. Gusto kong magtrabaho sa barko para matulungan ko ang aking pamilya at sana makakita naman ako ng ibang bansa. (I want to work on a ship so I could help my family, and perhaps see other countries as well). I informed him that if he knew and could read some English, he would be better able to get employed there, maybe even in a good position! After all, you cannot work abroad if you cannot communicate with your foreign bosses!

Even as the school year ended and Bugoy was naturally promoted to 8th Grade, even as I joined the remedial classes of Alexa, I continued tutoring Bugoy. When we started English, I lent him a Pepe and Pilar book, a basic book written in English. He started practicing reading by himself—opening the book after he reached home and well into the night.

I am proud to say that I am now lending Bugoy more advanced books, and he loves reading about ships!  

I tell myself, this is one way I could reform the system! I have read elsewhere that 90% of 10-year-old students in Philippine public schools cannot read or cannot understand what they read. In one international reading exam given, I was surprised to learn that even more affluent students in private schools generally scored lower than their foreign counterparts. I guess it is true that we are just a texting instead of a reading nation.

Maybe I am biased because I am an English teacher, but I also think that sacrificing English in schools whilst encouraging the use of Tagalog or native dialects/languages is dysfunctional. Whether we like it or not, English is the world's language of wider communication. In the near future, as our population grows whilst those in developed countries shrink, there would be an increased demand for skilled labour. Many more Filipinos could have higher-quality work opportunities there than they do now. But we need to communicate in English. Instead, over the years, our fluency in the language has deteriorated, largely because of the change in our medium of instruction.

If I were DepEd, I would even make English the primary medium of instruction in schools. That way, our young children, whilst their minds are still enormously malleable, could easily become coordinate bi-linguals—speaking their local language at home and English at school. With English, we can better compete in the marketplace. Tagalog as a national language is probably good for our national identity, but we can think of national identity once we have lifted ourselves out of poverty.

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*In this book, I will refer to everyone at school, even the younger pupils, as “students”

** The interviews for this article were conducted in 2023, more than two years ago.  Since then, partly due to the Filipino students’ shocking test results in reading, math, and science, the Department of Education has implemented several significant initiatives, including salary increases for public school teachers.

COMMENTARY

It was the great poet William Butler Yeats who said, “Education is not filling a bucket but lighting a fire”. A pundit then added, “It is also true that it is easier to ignite a fire if there is more fuel in the bucket.”

If the basic function of education is to kindle a questioning mind in order to develop critical thinking, it is also true that we need a certain amount of knowledge for the mind to be stimulated. Since the invention of writing, what better way to gain knowledge and the skill of critical thinking than learning how to read? Amongst other things, non-fiction books increase our direct knowledge, and fiction helps us imagine a world that we might not otherwise know.

Yet, the sad tale of Rina is not unique in the country but rather is a common experience amongst public school teachers. (I am not saying that all public schools are like Rina’s, as evidenced by my recent visit to a public elementary school in Negros, where exceptionally, there was a good teacher to student ratio, and where classrooms were relatively more spacious). For the most part, our schools are failing to educate our children. Teachers remain frustrated, and their students remain ignorant.  

We often say that we have an educated population because more than 80% of school-age Filipinos allegedly attend schools. The proof belies this assertion. In 2018, the Philippines joined 79 countries that participated in the study conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Periodically, PISA tests the skills of 15-year-old students worldwide. Three basic subjects are selected: reading, math, and science. It came as a great shock to many that amongst some 700,000 participants tested in 2018, Filipino students scored next to lowest in math, next to lowest in science, and the lowest in reading, The next test done in 2023 only marginally lifted the ranking of the Philippines. 

These findings were echoed by Senator Sherwin Gatchalian, chairman of the Senate Basic Education Committee, who, in a hearing on 30 April 2025, expressed alarm over a report by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that out of some 23 million students in elementary and high school, 18 million who graduated from 2019 to 2024 were considered functionally illiterate. “They graduated from our basic education system”, added Sen Gatchalian, “but they cannot read, they cannot understand and comprehend a simple story.”

Source: World Bank

In their inability to read and to think critically, these under-educated Filipinos have significantly contributed to the perennial under-performance of the Philippine economy—not only in their failure to engage in productive activities but, even more importantly, in their failure to vote for enlightened leadership who could then provide the structures and systems that would enhance our economic performance. Already, we have seen how the Philippines’ so-called progressive economy, second only to Japan in the 1950s and 60s, has spiraled down, falling well behind other countries in the region, one after the other, like domino tiles. In the 1970s, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore surpassed the Philippines in per capita income. Malaysia and Thailand followed in the 1980s; Indonesia and China in the 1990s. Once war-torn, Vietnam now has a better educational system and is ahead of the Philippines in economic terms.  

It is not as though this lack of educational facilities and proper support for our youth is the result of ignorance on the part of our leaders. Everyone knows that the future of our society is in our youth, and the future of our youth is in their education. Yet, in comparable data published in 2020, education was only 13.5% of the government budget. Amongst our neighbours—Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam—the equivalent percentages were about 20%.  

The Philippine Constitution explicitly states that the country must give education the highest budgetary priority. But this is not being followed. For instance, in the 2025 General Appropriation Act approved by Congress, the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) received a higher share of the budget in the amount of Php1.114 trillion, compared to the Department of Education with a total allocation of Php984 billion. This is in blatant disregard of the provision in the Philippine Constitution.*** 

This is compounded by the lackadaisical attitude of the government towards schooling. There are far too many unmerited school holidays, and we still have to hear the justification for why Philippine schools experienced one of the longest shutdowns in the world during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The brunt of this under-investment is felt by public school students, as Rina's experiences attest.  Likewise, educational policies are often misguided. One such policy is the NCLB (No Child Left Behind), copied from the U.S. Theoretically, it aims to provide all Filipino students, irrespective of their socio-economic background, with equal access to high-quality education. As this ideal scenario is unachievable in our current circumstances, school administrators—encouraged by the DepEd—often pressure their teachers to promote en masse the whole class, supposedly in the spirit of equity. Therefore, yes, there is no child left behind. 

What about the privately funded schools? Private school students are only 10% of the student population. A full 90% attend public schools. The reason behind this is the unaffordability of private education in the Philippines. Annual tuition fees per student alone may cost as much as Php30,000-100,000 for grade school, Php40,000-150,000 for high school, and Php60,000-200,000 for college (university level)—well beyond the capability of even many middle-class parents with a couple of school-age children. It is of little wonder then, that our traditionally high emphasis on the value of education has been eroding over the recent years. Instead, anecdotal evidence suggests that poor families—about 70% of our population—rely on trade apprenticeships for their financial survival. Plumbers learn by watching other plumbers. Generally, once the poor can eke out a living, all motivations for learning are gone. 

One weakness of many of our schools is that most may be too academic, and therefore do not meet the needs of low-income students for more immediately marketable practical skills. Lacking are more formal venues where learning opportunities for these skills are provided.     

On the other hand, schools are our primary means of education. A liberal and well-rounded education is essential to leading richer lives and to being conscious of the world beyond ourselves. Education makes us aware of the needs of our community, and indeed, our nation.

In summary, what we need from our leadership is greater attention to educational infrastructure, but also flexible, differentiated, and implementable policies that address the varied needs of the different segments of our population: from emphasis on short, marketable skills training for low income groups, to the cultivation of a liberal and well-rounded exposure that foster critical thinking and creativity for those who can afford the time and the funds needed for a good quality education. What is ideal, naturally, is a balance of both. Marketable skills equip individuals to thrive in the workforce, and a liberal education encourages them to engage thoughtfully with their communities and contribute meaningfully to society.

Prior to that, however, what we need is an enlightened leadership that recognises education’s primary role in our society, that is, if the Philippines were to develop as its neighbours have developed.    

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***President Marcos recently vetoed these budgetary appropriations. Following the Constitution, the revised government budget for 2025 allocates the highest amount to the Education Department, at Php1.055 trillion. The Department of Public Works and Highways received Php1,007 trillion.

Sources:

Tenazas, N.(2022).The financing of education in the Philippines. UNESCO. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000384382

World Bank.(2020).Government expenditure on education, total (% of GDP) – Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam. World Bank Open Data. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SE.XPD.TOTL.GD.ZS