Philippine Education

Philippine education has been under several phases of development from the pre-Spanish period to the present. Education has been one of the emphases of the government in the national struggle to meet the needs of society.

As early as in pre-Spanish period, education in the Philippines was informal, unstructured, and short of methods. Children were given more vocational training and less academics by their parents and by the tribal tutors.

The system of education had a lot of changes during the Spanish colonization. The tribal tutors were replaced by the Spanish Missionaries. Education was religiously-oriented. It was mainly for the elite, especially in the early years of Spanish colonization. Access to education by the Filipinos was later liberalized through the enactment of laws which provided for the establishment of at least one primary school for boys and girls in each town under the responsibility of the local government; and the establishment of a normal school for male teachers under the supervision of the Jesuits. Primary instruction was free and the teaching of Spanish was compulsory. Education during that period was inadequate, suppressed, and controlled.

Today, after several colonial rules and after major changes implemented in the Philippine educational system by the passage of several laws, education in the Philippines has improved a great deal. Several bodies have been created to administer to the needs of elementary, secondary, non-formal education, including culture and sports, post-secondary and middle-level manpower training and development.

The policy of the state regarding education is declared in Republic Act No. 9155 where it says: “It is hereby declared the policy of the State to protect and promote the right of all citizens to quality basic education and to make such education accessible to all by providing all Filipino children a free and compulsory education in the elementary level and free education in the high school level. Such education shall also include alternative learning systems for out-of-school youth and adult learners. It shall be the goal of basic education to provide them with the skills, knowledge and values they need to become caring, self- reliant, productive and patriotic citizens.”

In 2005-2006, primary schools in the Philippines number 41, 949 with 12,913,845 pupils and 341,789 teachers. There were 8,287 secondary schools with 6,267,015 students and 126,141 teachers.