15
Jun

11.6M Filipinos Are Out of School (OSY Rate in the Philippines)

Author: jps61974

Don’t be shocked with the number of out-of-school youths in the Philippines. This does not mean total enrollments are dropping. In fact, enrollments have been increasing by an average of 0.98 percent every year, data from the education department’s research and statistics division shows.

Likewise, to some extent, the drop can be explained by changes in the way the education department computes participation rates.

According to latest reports, in the beginning of school year 2002-2003, participation rate was computed based on the age group consisting of 6-11 years old for elementary and 12-15 years old for secondary whereas the previous system used 7-12 and 13-16 years old for elementary and secondary respectively. This means data from school year 2002-2003 onwards cannot be compared with that of previous years.

But data from 2002-2003 to 2006-2007 are already comparable. And they are still exhibiting marked declines in levels of participation. From 90.29 percent in school year 2002-2003, participation rates still fell by 7 percentage points to 83.22 percent last school year (2006-2007).

And compared to total enrollments, the population of children reaching school age is increasing at an even faster rate of 2.34 percent (the latest census indicated that this slowed down to 2.04 percent).

Data from the education department showed that last school year (2006-2007), only 947,872 out of the 2,261,552 total estimated number of six-year-old children in the country were enrolled.

For the same year, only 1,016,050 children out of the 2,243,066 total estimated number of seven-year olds were enrolled.

In sum, more than 11.6 million Filipinos from 6 to 24 years old are out of school. What happens next if the government cannot do something about this?