The cost of ghost students
I had just come from an immersion in a public school in Surigao, hoping to understand better how teachers address the alarming number of nonreaders among high school students. For those following the state of education in the country, the Philippines currently has a 90-percent learning poverty rate. In concrete terms, nine out of 10 Filipino children aged 10 cannot read and understand simple text. It is already quite disheartening to read about this situation in the news. It is another to see the problem up close and hear the stories of students struggling with illiteracy.
Despite all the challenges, the teachers in the school we visited remain resourceful and determined. One teacher found a workbook designed for early readers and shared it with her colleagues so they could photocopy its pages to create after-school worksheets. Even the school head volunteered to conduct the 1:1 reading tutorials. While lack of resources is a significant obstacle to implementing effective programs, the teachers say that the biggest barrier they are encountering is helping students overcome the stigma of being a nonreader.
The students who struggle with reading also need to deal with bullying and name-calling. And for someone in a life stage with a strong desire to fit in among their peers, the idea of being “different” can heighten the frustration. Some students choose to underperform rather than risk the embarrassment of being singled out for extra reading sessions. So even when teachers dedicate themselves to personalized, one-on-one reading sessions, the fear of being pulled out of class or having to stay after school can be enough to deter students from seeking help.
Yet, the high school we visited refuses to give up on its students. Even without any funding, the teachers and the school administrator found a way to set up a private reading room that was not in the main campus area. This way, after-school sessions could be done with a bit more privacy. The teachers noticed that this not only improved attendance but the students also felt freer to practice reading preschool-level books without shame. Throughout the school year, the teachers saw a significant decline in nonreaders. The problem doesn’t end, though—as they expect another crop of nonreaders from the incoming seventh graders. When I asked one of the lead teachers how she keeps motivated, she shared that she was a former alumna of that public high school, and she believes that helping her students read, at the very least, is one hurdle she can help them overcome to give them a fighting chance at a better future.
This raises the question of how much more dedicated teachers could achieve if they were not constantly forced to find workarounds. Perhaps the crisis in public education is not really due to resource shortage but a consequence of systemic corruption that siphons funds away from students who need them the most. For instance, the Department of Education (DepEd) launched the senior high school voucher program in 2015 to provide subsidies so that qualified students who could not be accommodated in overcrowded public schools could enroll for free in private schools. However, DepEd recently revealed it had withheld P200 million in subsidies for 22,000 nonexistent enrollees for school year 2023-2024 alone. One private school that fraudulently claimed government subsidies was found to have 98 percent of its student population as “ghost students.”
The Private Education Assistance Committee (PEAC), which oversees the program’s implementation, claimed that it flagged to DepEd the voucher program’s vulnerability to fraud as early as 2016. However, no concrete measures were taken to effectively address the monitoring-related concerns raised, making it easy for the past 10 years to exploit loopholes in the learner information system to claim subsidies for students who do not exist. To date, the PEAC has only been able to audit 10 percent of the accredited schools, leaving the full extent of the problem still unknown. While policymakers discuss reforms and conduct investigations, students and teachers in underfunded schools, just like the one I visited, continue to suffer from overcrowded classrooms and insufficient materials.
Accountability must be non-negotiable. DepEd must not only terminate agreements with fraudulent schools, they should also be asked to return unjustified subsidies they had received in the past. Legal action must also be pursued against school administrators and public officials who have been found complicit in falsifying documents (Alliance of Concerned Teachers chairperson Vladimir Quetua said that the name “Mary Grace Piattos” appeared again among the list of ghost students).
Monitoring systems must also be overhauled to ensure real-time verification of student enrollment. The recent commitment to 100-percent verification of voucher recipients in the 2024-2025 school year is a welcome change. However, these reforms must be sustained beyond just one cycle. There should also be effective whistleblower mechanisms in place so that teachers and administrators can safely report irregularities without fear of retaliation.
When corruption seeps into a country’s education system, it’s not just public funds we’re losing. It robs children of their future, especially those for whom education is the only way out of poverty. If dedicated teachers can work miracles with so little, imagine what they could do if the greed of unscrupulous people did not stand in the way of the support and resources they desperately need.
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eleanor@shetalksasia.com
