As classes opened at UP Diliman on Tuesday, June 14, hundreds of students launched a series of protest actions to condemn “the worsening education crisis” in UP and the rest of the country.
“Tuition hikes, budget cuts, the imposition of new fees — these are just some of the things students have been greeted with this academic year,” said Jemimah Garcia, chair of the UP Diliman University Student Council (USC).
“These policies diminish the state’s responsibility to ensure everyone’s right to education, and place a heavy financial burden on students and their parents,” Garcia said.
Garcia was one of the speakers in a lightning rally held at the UP Theater at around 10 am, where UP Diliman’s estimated 1,750 freshmen were gathered for the traditional Freshmen Welcome Assembly (FWA).
A similar protest was also held at the nearby UP Film Institute, where students from UP Manila held their own FWA.
At around lunch, the protesters all marched to Palma Hall, where they held a brief program. Many of the students held up signs condemning UP’s Socialized Tuition and Financial Assistance Program (STFAP), a system by which students are assigned to different brackets based on their family’s declared annual income.
Under the STFAP, students assigned to the highest economic status, bracket A, must pay P1,500 per unit, a tuition rate comparable to those of many private schools. Meanwhile, students on the other end of the scale, under bracket E, are full scholarship students who pay no tuition at all.
“Experience has shown that the STFAP is inherently flawed, and merely a smokescreen for tuition increases,” said RG Tesa, secretary-general of Students for the Advancement of Democratic Rights in UP (Stand UP), a university-wide alliance of student organizations.
The Philippine Collegian, UP’s official student publication, reported that 900 freshmen were classified under bracket A of the STFAP this year. In sharp contrast, only 40 freshmen were classified under bracket E.
The current STFAP was first implemented in AY 2007-2008, when the rate paid by the students in the highest economic bracket rose from P300 to P1,500 per unit.
“It is the government’s duty to subsidize the state’s educational institutions, in order to ensure that quality education remains an accessible option for the poorer members of our society,” said Tesa.
Education in crisis
Moreover, UP’s problems should be placed in the context of the other problems in the education sector, said Casey Giron, spokesperson of the militant student organization League of Filipino Students.
She condemned the administration of President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino for its “failure to follow through on his promises to reform the education sector.”
Giron cited the Aquino administration’s slash in funding for the education sector for 2011, which caused thousands of students to take to the streets during the last quarter of 2010, in massive protest actions against the budget cuts. At least 3,000 students walked out of their classes during November in UP Diliman, where the budget had been cut from P6.9 billion in 2010 to P5.53 billion for 2011.
“For state schools, a lower budget means a higher tuition, which means less opportunity for an education for the vast majority of Filipinos who can’t afford the rates,” said Giron. “Education is a right, not a privilege. We will say it again and again, until the government finally listens.”
On Tuesday, the protesters also zeroed in on the K-12 policy, which adds two more years of schooling to the country’s current 10-year program.
The Department of Education has said that the K-12 proposal would qualify students to find employment after graduating from high school, without having to go to a tertiary institution.
“The K-12 program is not a solution to the problems of the education sector, it only worsens them. More years in school only means more expenses for families, and more profit for schools,” Giron argued.
“Instead of improving the quality of education and ensuring that our educational system meets the needs of the Philippines and Filipinos, the K-12 policy turns schools into profit-making factories concerned only with churning out a whole generation of underqualified and underpaid potential workers,” Tesa added.
The students warned Aquino against continuing to effect policies that “worsen the plight of students, out-of-school youth, and the rest of the nation.”
“Aquino’s failed policies are not just evident in the education sector. His track record of siding with the elite, at the expense of the welfare of the masses, is evident in the state of other sectors such as health, agriculture, and the urban poor,” said Dan Ramos, vice-chair of the UPD-USC and member of militant youth organization Anakbayan.
“The protests will not stop as long as there are Filipinos without access to education, shelter, health, employment, and other basic needs. We challenge Aquino to stop bowing to the interests of his stockholders and instead serve the Filipino people,” Ramos said.
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