Observing our community, we will see young people working at a young age. This will always leave us thinking, “Why are they working instead of studying?", and the statement that will pop up in our heads is “Maybe their parents are irresponsible; that’s why they are working instead of going to school." But why can’t we just look for a deeper reason? Is our education really for everyone? Or is it just for privileged people? 

 

 

According to Unicef, a lot of Filipino children don’t have the opportunity to learn. Only 50% of children 3 to 4 years old are enrolled in daycare, while only 78% complete basic education, and the number of children out of school has reached 2.8 million. This happens because, over the past decade, we have experienced low investment, outdated teaching methods, and limited attention to the development of children’s social and emotional skills. This made the Filipino children lag behind, especially the vulnerable children, such as indigenous children and children with disabilities.

This challenge in our education can fuel the existing problems in our community, like the large amount of unemployment among Filipinos and poverty. We can’t deny that a lot of Filipinos have limited access to regular and productive jobs due to many reasons, and one of the major reasons is a lack of education. This increased the poverty rate in the Philippines. Which leads to more Filipinos becoming poorer today compared to 2018, based on the latest official data release from the PSA. According to the Family Income and Expenditure Survey of PSA (2022), 19.99 million individuals are living below the poverty threshold, which is 18.1% of our population. In 2018, there were 17.67 million poor Filipinos. PSA also said that 7.8%, or 3.17 million Filipinos, are unemployed or jobless.

 

 

This statistic only shows that a lack of education can cause a lot of problems in our community. Giving importance to improving the quality of education and making it accessible for everyone will also solve a lot of problems that we have been encountering in our community for so many years. With the right education, we can use this to make better decisions about who we will vote for, leading to an organized and better country. This will avoid corruption and solve problems such as poverty and the large number of unemployed Filipinos.

It is important to make everyone aware of what is happening to our education system. We should fight for our rights to have an equal quality of education for everyone, despite our social status in our community.

It’s time to improve. You and I can make a lot of contributions to create a peaceful and better environment for the children of Filipinos to have a better future. Sign this petition!