A progressive lawmaker questioned the administration rhetoric of “democratizing access to quality education” in light of the Department of Education’s announcement of the expansion of the Government Assistance to Students and Teachers in Private Education (GASTPE).
“By 2016, the Aquino administration is planning to subcontract government’s duty to provide education to nearly half of the country’s senior high school students to private schools,” said ACT TEACHERS Party-List Representative Antonio Tinio.
DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro has announced that they will use an expanded Education Services Contracting scheme under GASTPE to encourage private schools to put up Senior High Schools (SHS) to accommodate up to 40% of a projected one million incoming SHS students by 2016.
The Education Services Contracting scheme of GASTPE provides a tuition subsidy provided by government to students who cannot be accomodated in public high schools. Grantees in participating private schools in NCR enjoy a subsidy of P10,000, while those in the rest of the country receive P6,500. GASTPE funds or jointly managed by the Deped and the Fund for Assistance to Private Education (FAPE).
Tinio noted that there has been a massive increase in government subsidy to private schools through GASTPE in the past decade. “In 2003, the Deped budget for GASTPE was only P758.6 million, benefiting some 250,000 grantees. This school year, GASTPE is now a whopping P7 billion, intended for 1 million grantees. That’s nearly a tenfold increase in government allocation.”
“GASTPE, which has been around since the 1980s, is an early example of a public-private partnership scheme for providing basic social services. The massive expansion of GASTPE indicates that government is heading towards a high school education system, including the new Senior High School component of K to 12, that is extensively privatized,” said the partylist representative. “Is this consistent with the government’s Constitutional mandate to establish and maintain a system of free high school education?”
Tinio acknowledged that the private education sector as a whole benefits significantly from GASTPE. “It provides much needed aid not only to the student-grantees, but also to private school owners, their teachers, and employees,” acknowledged Tinio, “Up to 80% of all private high schools depend on the GASTPE to remain viable.”
However, given the magnitude of the allocation, Tinio said that the question of whether it is an equitable use of scarce government resources must be asked. “Since GASTPE only provides a partial tuition subsidy, the vast majority of grantees are students from lower-middle class families who can afford to pay the remaining tuition as well as the other costs of private high school education. In short, GASTPE is a government subsidy for the middle class rather than the poor. Para sa may-kaya, hindi sa mahihirap.”
“This school year, GASTPE will benefit up to one million mostly middle-class students who will be enabled to continue studying in private schools. Meanwhile, 4.3 million high-school aged children, mostly from the rural poor, will have no access to high school education. What is the government doing for them?”
“At P7 billion, GASTPE is already one of the single biggest programs of the Deped, dwarfing the allocation for Universal Kindergarten, Alternative Learning System, School Health and Nutrition, Physical Fitness and Sports, Textbooks and Instructional Materials, and many more combined. It could be used to construct up to 10,000 classrooms outright.”
Tinio questioned Sec. Luistro’s claim that the increase of GASTPE funding is intended to “democratize access to quality education across the country. “Is GASTPE really about democratizing access to education? Is it helping those who need most help from the government, or is it reinforcing existing inequalities by subsidizing students who can afford the privilege and enjoy the advantages of a private school education?”
Tinio pointed out that private high school graduates are more likely to be admitted to the top universities in the country compared to public high school graduates.
“Assistance to private schools through GASTPE has a Constitutional and legal basis, but the primordial responsibility of government is to provide free, quality education, especially to the poor. Current GASTPE funding, as well as the administration’s plan to further expand it for K to 12, should be reviewed in that light,” Tinio said.