Youth solon to PNoy: Solve high rate of school dropouts in 5 years

As classes opened on Monday, a youth lawmaker at the House of Representatives urged the administration of President Benigno Aquino III to solve during his term the country’s high rate of school dropouts. Kabataan party-list Rep. Raymond Palatino said Aquino should make education more accessible to Filipinos to lessen the number of out-of-school youths in five years. ““The number of dropouts and out-of-school youths points to a glaring problem of quality and inaccessibility... If the Aquino administration won’t properly solve this, it is sad to say that ours will remain an uneducated nation," he said in a statement on Monday. He added that solving the dropout rate is a “requisite" in saving the country from poverty. According to the Department of Education (DepEd), out of 100 Grade 1 pupils, only 66 will finish elementary while only 43 will graduate high school. Meanwhile, Aurora Rep. Juan Edgardo Angara, chairperson of the House committee on higher and technical education, called on the government to spend more on education to address the shortage of classrooms and chairs in public schools. Angara, in a separate statement, said the government should have used the P34.8 billion Congress allotted for educational infrastructure instead of tightening its spending to increase savings. “Unfortunately, the government forfeited this advantage when it slowed down spending for infrastructure in the first four months," he said. He further said that the Aquino administration should immediately start a “catch-up program" to solve the classroom shortage. An estimated 25.7 million students trooped to schools on Monday to kick off another school year on Monday. The DepEd said the country lacks over 140,000 classrooms to accommodate this number of students. - VVP, GMA News