The house that went to school
A diploma bears one name. In a Filipino house, it belongs to everyone.
Before it reaches the living room wall, a whole household has gone to school: the mother counting the sari-sari store’s earnings after dark; the father watching his children grow older on a phone screen abroad; the sister closing her books so a younger brother may keep his open.
Sometimes a piece of land has changed hands. Sometimes a carabao has disappeared from the field.
At graduation, these absences become, for an afternoon, a glorious presence. The child bows, the parents weep. The years of making do have put on a toga.
Then the chairs are folded, and in another house the reckoning begins.
How much for tuition? What can we sell? Who can wait?
There is love in this arithmetic. There is also a burden government has grown accustomed to leaving at the family’s door.
We praise the student who succeeds against the odds. We ought to be more impatient with the odds.
For 2026–2027, some 30,101 applicants to the Bagong Pilipinas Merit Scholarship Program met its academic eligibility requirements. There were only 20,000 slots.
We told them to study hard and earn their opportunity. They did. At the door to which we had directed them, 10,101 found no room.
In an office, this is a shortage of slots. At the family table, it is the old reckoning resumed: another debt, another postponement, another child asked to wait.
The country sits at that table, too. The teachers, health professionals, and skilled workers we need are still somebody’s children. Their future, and ours, depends on what the household can spare.
That responsibility animates the proposed Presidential Merit Scholarship Programs Act, whose bicameral report both chambers of Congress have ratified.
As one of its principal authors, I believe its deepest promise is continuity. A family commits its savings; a child leaves home. Years of study lie ahead. Government’s word becomes part of what they carry.
Such trust deserves a longer life than an announcement.
Putting these programs into law would establish obligations that outlast the officials administering them. Congress must fund the promise; agencies must deliver it. Otherwise, the family discovers that its certainty existed only on paper.
But our hopes for the young must be roomy enough for their different gifts.
In the household hierarchy of ambitions, the university degree occupies the place of honor. Technical-vocational education stands below it, too often regarded as a disappointment survived.
Yet there is intelligence in the hand that knows its tools: the technician tracing a fault, the welder whose joint must hold. The college and technical scholarships recognize that wider world of ability. A young Filipino should be encouraged to excel at useful work without first defending its dignity.
We must look farther, too, than the familiar addresses of opportunity. Fairer geographic access and preference among equally qualified applicants from underserved and disadvantaged communities would help bring talent into view.
Once seen, it must be sustained. After the scholarship notice comes the ordinary business of staying in school.
“Delayed disbursement” travels lightly across an office memorandum. In a boarding house, it is rent unpaid. Back home, it is a mother returning to someone from whom she has already borrowed.
The measure’s release timelines matter because a late scholarship sends the cost of government’s delay to the household it was meant to help. The household’s bills do not wait for government’s paperwork.
Government must keep faith if it would ask for faithfulness in return.
Under the “Galing Para sa Bayan” component, scholars would serve in the Philippines for as many years as they received assistance, beginning within a year of graduation.
Here the household’s story opens into the nation’s. Someone helps you through school; in time, you are able to help another. The circle widens to the classroom, the hospital, the farm. What was once a family’s hope becomes a gift the child can place in other hands.
Did the scholar finish? Did assistance arrive on time? Did education lead to meaningful work? The answers will come after the speeches. We must still be paying attention.
Somewhere tonight, a parent will count the day’s earnings and set aside tomorrow’s allowance. A student will bend over a lesson, carrying a family’s hopes with the unremarked seriousness of the young.
They are already doing their part.
When the diploma finally goes up on the wall, among the family photographs and the keepsakes of a life patiently built, let it bear witness to more than the sacrifices of a household.
Let it say that our country has kept faith with that family, too.
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Tingog party list Rep. Jude Acidre chairs the House committee on higher and technical education and is a cochair of the Second Congressional Commission on Education.
