The State of Education
in the Bikol Region

Arnulfo Aaron R. Reganit, Ed.D.

Profile of Bikol Region

The Bikol Region is situated in the southern tip of Luzon . It lies in the mid-section of the country, occupying a land area of 1.76 million hectares or 5.87% of the country's total land area. In it is found the majestic although sometimes furious Mount Mayon . Its terrain is comprised of rolling hills, mountains, and vast plains bordered by coastlines. Blessed with a good climate and abundant rain throughout the year, Bikol boasts of the lush growth of its abaca plants, coconut trees, rice, and many varieties of orchids as well as other indigenous fauna. It has rich forest resources and extensive deposits of iron, mercury, gold, silver, chromite, marble, white clay, limestone, and pertile. Its geothermal energy makes it one of the main sources of electric power for the Luzon grid while its majestic Mount Mayon earns for it the reputation of being one of the most noted tourist spots in the country.

While Bikol has been endowed with so much of these resources, its socio-economic development is much slower compared to that of other leading regions. This slow growth can be attributed to factors like calamities such as typhoons and volcano eruptions, the disturbing peace-and-order situation in some parts of the region, an oversized population, and prevailing poverty. These factors have adversely affected various aspects of development in the region, including education.

The region is composed of six provinces and a total of seven cities, four these newly-declared namely, Sorsogon, Masbate , Tabaco and Ligao. It also has 115 municipalities grouped into 14 congressional districts.

Status of Basic Education in the Bikol Region

Education has been treasured by the Filipino people as basic to the strength and survival of the nation. This is evidenced by the interest shown to it by our government and multi-sectoral leaders in education. Numerous researches have been devoted to the assessment of our school system. These reports do not hesitate to identify the flaws of the public school system and call for widespread reforms.

Admittedly, our educational system leaves much to be desired. Quality basic education continues to be a formidable challenge to the Department of Education. This paper then is an honest assessment of the state of basic education, particularly in the Bikol region, aimed to facilitate an understanding of and response to the basic educational concerns.

Basically, there are three major issues confronting basic education in the Bikol Region namely, access, progress, and quality. Access deals with the question of whether all children of school age can be accommodated or gain entry to the schools in the region. Progress deals with the problem of whether those who enter Grade One finish at least the first six years of basic education, which is free and compulsory. Quality deals with the level of performance of our elementary students measured mostly by achievement tests and reported as Mean Percentage Scores (MPS).

Access and Progress. Bikol is divided into 9 school divisions, 160 school districts with 2,991 public elementary schools, and 143 private elementary schools. Elementary education is the vanguard of access to basic education. Yet of the 3,455 barangays in the region, 125 qualified barangays do not have an elementary school. Also, some 358 schools are incomplete or are schools which do not offer the complete six years of elementary grades. On the other hand, there are only 454 public and 154 private schools that offer secondary education.

There are 2,135 multigrade classes in the Region. These multigrade classes come in a variety of type of grade clusters. This situation results into an elementary participation rate of about 93.03%, which varies from 90.21% in Albay, the lowest and 98.13% in Naga City , the highest. On the other hand, the secondary participation rate is 62.31% with Naga City having 106.66%; Masbate with 54.04% is the lowest among the nine divisions. Participation rate is the ratio between the enrollment in the school-age range to the total population of that age range. The participation rate in Masbate means that many cannot go to school because of several reasons or most probably have no schools to go to. Below is a graphic illustration of the participation rate of the nine school divisions during the academic year, 2000-2001.

Table I. Participation Rate in Bikol

A high participation rate means that many of the children are enrolled in several schools. This further indicates the availability and accessibility of these schools.

Progress is very much related to access. Children who enter our school system should remain and finish their schooling. Two indicators are considered measures of progress. These are one, the Cohort Survival Rate (CSR), and two, the Dropout Rate. CSR is the proportion of enrollees who begin a grade or year vis-à-vis those who actually reach the end of the required number of years of study. Or more simply, it refers to the number of children who do complete the elementary grades, and eventually finish the secondary level. At present, only 65.51% or 66 out of 100 pupils who enter Grade One in a particular school year are expected to reach Grade Six. For the secondary education, 70.05% of those who enter first year are predicted to be able to finish the four-year secondary education.

Table II. Cohort Survival Rate

The Dropout Rate, on the other hand, is the number of or percentage of children who entered a particular grade vis-à-vis the number of children who finished the grade and were either promoted or retained, but did not enroll for the next or the same grade the following school year. The regional dropout rate in the elementary level is 1.30% and 8.86% for the secondary level. This seems to indicate that the government has done its assignment regarding protecting the capacity of students to continue studying in the elementary level; however, there seems to be a substantial loss in the secondary education that is cause for some worry. Table III reflects the dropout rates.

Table III. Dropout Rate

Quality. The quest for quality education is a non-ending quest. Through the years, achievement test results have shown a mean percentage scores (MPS) of 40.94% against a target of 75%. These show that our pupils seem to have learned less than one-half of the competencies expected of them based on a standard curriculum. This curriculum comes in the form of a list of the basic or minimum and desired learning competencies of a child at a particular level.

Status of Higher Education

The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) Region V renews its commitment to providing the Bikolano youth with quality and excellent education, i.e., higher education that is relevant and responsive, effective and efficient, and accessible and equitable. Higher education in the Region is very extensive, consisting of about 141 colleges and universities with a total of 83,541 students. The enrollment of college students in the private institutions is higher than that of state universities and colleges. A total of eight state universities and colleges exist in the Bikol region, and they are chartered, operate out of their own budget, and virtually independent of each other and of CHED. In the eleven different disciplines, enrollment is concentrated on three fields as shown below:

Table IV. Enrollment Figures by Discipline

Performance in the Board Examinations

Graduates of professional courses are required to pass professional board examinations before they are allowed to practice their profession. The performance of the higher education institutions in these examinations is almost invariably taken as the worth of colleges and universities in the program concerned. Performance in the board examinations serves as a key indicator of the quality of its education.

In the Bikol region, the average of the passing rate in all the professional board examinations in the year 2000 was only 28.13%. It can be gleaned from the data in the given (see Table V) that the region has registered a passing rate about that of the national average only in the Social Worker Board Examination. Below is the regional average passing rate in the various Professional Board Examinations given during 2000.

Table V. Regional Average Passing Rate in PBE

Accreditation. Accreditation is viewed as a mechanism through which institutions voluntarily pursue educational quality through self-evaluation and peer visitation. A school's accredited status is valuable information to students and their prospective employers as it establishes it as an institution of reputable academic standard. However, only a few colleges and universities in the region have taken advantage of the accreditation. Of the 117 higher education institutions with offerings in various fields, only about 18 programs in 12 institutions have been accredited. Of these, 14 have been accredited status II while two are accredited level I and two are acquiring accreditation for the first time. Liberal Arts, Commerce, and Education are the more commonly accredited programs, which are offered by private sectarian schools. The table below shows the accredited programs by PAASCU, PACU-COA and by AACUP.

Table VI. Accredited Programs in the Region

Interfacing the Higher Education
with Basic Education

The status of education in the region calls for a collaboration between that of basic education and that of higher education to address the gaps so as to truly achieve the kind of quality education that is responsive and relevant to the needs and call of the region. We cannot raise the level of quality of higher education until we have quality basic education. Therefore, the interfacing of school professionals from both sectors should be given importance and urgency. To bridge the gaps between basic and higher education, the following are suggested:

1. Regular dialogue between the practitioners of the Department of Education and of the Commission on Higher Education to update each other on the new
2. Trends and development, and emerging problems
3. Harmonizing DepEd policies and thrusts with CHED
4. Sharing of current best practices
5. Rationalized exposure and immersion of students in the higher education and vice versa, if needed
6. Twinning arrangement between the two sectors; and
7. Link-up with professional organizations and practitioners.

Conclusion

The aforementioned exposition of the problems that beset the state of education in the Bikol region is not a statement of hopelessness in solving them but an indication that the concerns, well-defined as they are, require appropriate measures in order to be addressed. A partnership between the two sectors that is marked by some sense of synergy is necessary to the existence of quality education. Furthermore, a convergence of the visions of the Department of Education and of the Commission on Higher Education with that of the Regional Development Council specifically as to what kind of region it would like to become would go a long way toward benefiting the region.

In closing, the educational issues and problems have to be addressed by both the basic and higher education sectors now. The overwhelming task of educating future generations of Bikolanos requires sustained cooperative effort and cannot be derailed by either hesitancy or indecision over inconsequential differences of opinions among the various sectors involved in the task. In short, they must cooperate and bring about a concerted effort to meet its own challenges. Without a common will towards the state of Bikol Education, we will forever be engaged in fruitless debates over what is wrong with our education, to the detriment of the future of our Bikol Region.

Data Sources

• IRP Report
• NEDA Report for the 2 nd Quarter, 2000.
• DECS Region V Regional Profile, CY 2000-2001
• Data Released by PRC Regional Office, Region V.
• Data Released by CHED Regional Office, Region V.
• Philippine Higher Education in the 21 st Century: Strategies for Excellence and Equity:
• The Task Force on Higher Education, Commission on Higher Education. 1995.