Philippines: Taxi Diaries (1)

"Parents in the  Philippines are wholly focused on their children getting a College degree."

I am in a cab driving to Manila airport. It's now become my habit to quiz taxi drivers about their children in whichever country I'm in. By asking after their children I generally can dig deeper into what kind of school they attend, where they might go after school, what the impressions are of the teachers etc. It all adds colour to my understanding of local education conditions and how the primary purchaser (a parent) perceives the product (schooling).

Ray is my chatty, smiley driver tonight (I think almost every Filipino I've met this week has beamed with smiles - a delightful phenomenon that is quite unusual after London). I estimate Ray is in his late forties. The nuggets he tells me are assembling into a narrative that I suspect is typical for many millions of Filipinos. Ray's story then goes as follows.

Ray was born in the rural Provinces. His father (now passed away) was a farmer who hadn't attended school. Ray himself went to primary school and left after grade six. Ray took a conscious decision as a young man to migrate to the capital city to increase his earnings power. As far as I can gather Ray's last formal involvement with education was the driving license test he took in 1988 just before he first started driving his cab.

Ray and his wife have three children: two sons, and the youngest, a daughter. All three are currently attending college (or have just graduated). The children are studying Information Technology, Business Management and Computer Science at a public university in Manila.  The eldest son has just begun a job at a call centre. "The pay when you start is OK, around 17,000 pesos per month (c.USD $400), it but gets better as you stay," says Ray, "it's tough for him since he sometimes begins work at 3am, and sometimes at 1pm." Ray appears, quite rightly, quietly proud of his son's employment and the prospects now open to his other two kids. One of them is already earning, I estimate, 3-4 times more than his father.

Ray's children have achieved what I believe some social development geeks call Single Generation Transformation. From rural farming grandparents, via Ray's urban migration and serious hard graft, the grandchildren are all now college educated and ready for skilled employment within the service industries. Education has clearly been a major driver in bringing about this transformation - a free public school system, a fast growing economy, huge parental sacrifice and constant pressure on the kids to strive for self-improvement are all wrapped up in this. This is what it means I suppose to move from "low income" country status to a "middle income" category.  I wonder how long Ray's kids will remain working within Manila, before the lure of Hong Kong, Dubai, or Korea takes them abroad like so many of their compatriots (someone told me this week that 15% of the Philippines' total GDP derives from remittances sent by overseas workers).

When I ask Ray about his experiences of schooling his children, he tells me that "of course I am a driver and my children went to government school. Private schools here are very expensive - 50,000 pesos per semester." Interestingly, when quizzed about what kinds of quality standards his children's school exhibited, Ray shrugs his shoulders and says non-committally "it's OK." It occurs to me that my question is somewhat crass; when free government provision is all that is within reach, there is no real choice over quality standards.

The other interesting nugget is that even government schooling isn't totally free. Ray says "miscellaneous fees cost about 5,000 pesos a year...my son took a jeepney (public bus) every morning and afternoon to school and back, that's 30 pesos per day, plus text books and materials."

When I ask Ray about whether he's ever thought about pursuing any further studies for himself he laughs it off, "life is tough, I must drive."

When I ask Ray about whether he ever thinks about returning to his family home in the Provinces, he pauses; "yes, maybe I will, when all the children are taken care of and have good jobs.  There is no money in the Provinces, but I can farm." I can't tell if it's my romanticising temperament or something genuinely felt by Ray, but I think I detect a hint of nostalgia flicker in Ray's eyes as he utters this.  Work and family may have become so all-absorbing for Ray these last two decades there may have been little time to consider his own future plans.  We have now arrived at the Departures drop-off zone and it's time for me to get out.  I realise I haven't taken a picture of Ray to include with this post, and now wish I had.  I will make sure I take photos of any other taxi drivers I happen to write about in future. 

Philippines 2: Public School Visit

During my week in Manila, I visited two government schools also in the district of Mandaluyong. The trip was kindly facilitated by the Department of Education.   Below I include some photos and commentary from what we saw.

School number one was actually an elementary school, and we only went around briefly.  We arrived after lunch in what was a very active school break, with swarms of children playing around the halls and courtyard. They were very intrigued to see who the guests were, talking with their Principal.

School Entrance.

Elementary school - playground and classroom blocks

Classroom block - no running in the corridors!

A rather happy student, pleased with sliding down the bannisters and having his photo taken. 

District officer in charge of cluster of Mandaluyong public schools.  Kindly hosted us around the school tours.

The second school we saw was a Senior High school, and is I believe the flagship school within the District (it should be noted therefore that it may not be completely representative of what other urban state secondaries look like, for purposes of comparison to the private school).  We first met with the Principal and she then invited what I think must have been the entire female faculty to join us, as you can see from the photo below:

 

Yours truly with staff of Gonzales High School.  Principal is the lady immediately left of me.

When quizzed many of the staff had been teaching at the school for between 7-15 years.  All appeared very pleased with their roles and the progress of the children (but then they were all in front of their boss and conducting an official school tour, so I'd hardly expect them to say anything else.) 


The full name of the school is the rather lengthy Mataas na Paaralang Neptali A. Gonzales, and you can visit the school's official website here.  From what I could gather, the late Mr. Gonzales Senior was a politician representing the District in Congress, and he founded the original school using his own money.  His son, also now the current District Congressman, is still sponsoring the school and has recently organised and funded the construction of two new school blocks, adding 80 new classrooms to the facilities.  

Reminders of Messrs Gonzales Senior and Junior were all over the school - both in the golden statue greeting visitors in pride of place in the entrance courtyard, and in the political banners hanging from the school blocks. 

Students just outside the Gonzales school entrance, leaving school after a busy day.

University-esque facade that greets visitors upon entry.

 

Statue of Congressman Gonzales, Snr, founder of the school.

Dedication Plaque noting that the new Congressman Gonzales has organised the construction of the new school classrooms.

Campaign poster for current congressman hanging in school. 

As for the school's facilities themselves, we unfortunately only got to see the empty classrooms.  I counted desks in each classroom, and they had been standardised to 45 students to 1 teacher, lower class sizes than typical for the private school (and certainly for rural state schools).  There didn't appear to be any projectors or educational ICT equipment, but the new classrooms were clean and spacious. 

Grade 7 weekly timetable - school day formally starts at 7am and finishes at 1.30pm. 

One unexpected feature that the Congressman had donated to the school was what was called a 'Practice House.'  It was essentially a stand-alone bungalow domestic residence, with bathroom, living room, and kitchen, in which, so we were told, students could practice 'home economics' and hospitality/domestic cleaning. 

On the one hand this is quite a practical policy to equip students with vocational skills that are clearly in demand out there in the real world.  On the other hand, I worry that encouraging students immediately into professional domestic service is perhaps reinforcing the stereotypical role that foreigners often expect Filipinos to pursue.  It may not be raising aspiration in quite the best way, but we didn't really have much of a chance to interrogate exactly how the Practice House was used, which students got to use it, and how it integrated into the standard curriculum. 

The outside of the Practice House

 

The Principal shows us inside the Practice House.

Another group photo outside the Practice House.

 The school had decent sports facilities, and was clearly relatively well-resourced.  We couldn't get much detail about the student attainment levels or extra-curricular activities, but were reassured that relative to other government schools student performance was strong. 

Gonzales Sports rink for basketball, football, and athletics.

In terms of infrastructure the Gonzales school came across as marginally better than the JRU private school.  The comparison is interesting though, because clearly Gonzales receives considerable formal and informal funding subsidies to help it expand and maintain its good quality infrastructure - I wonder how sustainable those levels of subsidies will be right across the state system, particularly in the poorer rural Provinces?  Much more detailed data will be needed about the inspection reports on each school, the assessment of student performance, parental satisfaction levels, alumni tracking, College and University acceptance rates, and indeed the actual nature of the curriculum and student competencies mastered.  It turns out that not much standardised testing is actually done in the Philippines, and therefore making precisely this quality comparison between private schools and public schools is difficult.  I think the last comparable student performance data available that takes in both types of schools is the 2002 PISA test, but I will have to dig into this. 

Philippines 1: Private School Visit

Last week I was in Manila, doing some work for the Asian Development Bank.  Part of our introductory tour involved going on a school visit, and since one of the chief reasons for me starting this blog was to capture and record some of these school visits, I include some photos and some of my personal impressions below.

The school we visited was a high school called Jose Rizal University High School which is part of the University and College campus complex, offering education right from Elementary level, through High School and into College, University, and Post-Graduate level.   It turns out that it's more common for Higher Education Institutes within the Philippines to diversify upstream, as it were, and run High Schools or younger to help feed the main University or simply as part of a general community building activity.

On the way to school we saw some wonderfully colourful Jeepneys, which are the public buses running around Manila and decorated in idiosyncratic style by their drivers.  We also came across a couple of yellow school buses - I wonder where it was decreed that all school buses in whatever part of the world you're in MUST BE YELLOW?

A Jeepney - notice the strong Catholic flavour!

School bus within JRU's courtyard.

We arrived about 2pm just as afternoon lessons were beginning, and were given a very hearty welcome by the Principal, who informed us that there were about 1,600 students enrolled and about 45 teaching staff.

Outside the Principal's office, a picture board of all 45 teaching staff, organised by subject.  

Yours truly standing with the School Principal.

Office of the VP for Basic Education, round the corner and in same corridor as main University Campus building.

Looking down on self-organised student rehearsal, in the concrete courtyard.

First floor corridor, row of classrooms on the left.

View of School's east wing, and high rise apartment's just opposite school.

The average class size in the school is around 50 students per teacher.  The few classes we saw did tend to have a teacher at predominantly at the front of the class, with some fairly tightly-pressed students sitting in rows.  Student engagement seemed decent enough, and c.80% of the 25 or so classrooms had projectors and smartboards.

A chemistry lesson in progress - 50 odd students and a smartboard.

Some girls pleased about their Physics Laboratory!

Helpful signs to differentiate which class I'm meant to be going to.

A biology lesson in progress.

School Computer Lab.

One of 3-4 e-monitors mounted by the school staircase or in the hallways, that scrolled information about the day's news, or links to school website, or announcements about lost property etc.  Quite a nifty information system for students.

My general impression was of a well-run school environment where kids appeared friendly and fully engaged.  Two members of staff had been teaching there for 23 years a piece, and their attitude about the school's mission and place in the community was highly positive.   The picture below shows the price range for the primary level students.

It's hard to read, but the picture lists tuition fees at between 18,000 to 22,000 Pesos per student per year (for Grades K to 6 in this case).  That's a remarkable $400-$550 USD per year price point.  We didn't get to see any hard examinations data but were told anecdotally that students did well and the school outperformed some of its local state school competitors.   About 400 of the attending students are part of the government's subsidised Education Service Contract (ESC) scheme, whereby lower-income families can get a student place paid for at a private school up to 10,000 pesos per annum, and then pay a top-up fee to make up the difference.  The scheme was introduced many years ago as part of a policy to reduce the supply-side crunch and pull local private sector schools into the mainstream system.

Another advantage the school has of being part of the University campus, is that it gets access to the shared sports facilities (see below):

School gym.

College students prepare to play basketball.

Part of the large sports hall facility.

JRU High School is planning on expanding next year, and has already identified the parcel of land next door in which the capital works will begin.   I'd very much like to thank all the staff and students who hosted me and my colleagues during the school, and I wish them the best of luck with the expansion plans!

The construction site next door where JRU High School's extension may be built.

A view of the neighbouring streets of Mandaluyong City surrounding the school.  It's an inner-city school within one of the central urban districts of Metro Manila.

A Book Worth Reading: From Village School to Global Brand: Changing the world through education

I have just finished reading a new book called From village school to global brand: changing the world through education, which I recommend to anyone at all interested in the crossover between private sector enterprise and education.

It is written by a colleague of mine called Professor James Tooley. He is well-known in certain circles for his previous book called The Beautiful Tree about his experiences with low-cost private school entrepreneurs in India and Africa. His day job is running the E.G.West centre, which is an interesting education department that sits within Newcastle University. Most of the time however Professor Tooley is travelling to far-flung and slightly dangerous places. He's unlike many academics because he has left the ivory tower and applied some of his own theories in the real world. Chiefly by setting up a low-cost private school chain in Ghana called Omega, which has just received a large amount of funding from Pearson education to expand rapidly. This could be very big news if you're a poor Ghanaian parent seeking a better school for your son or daughter. But I'm digressing.

Why did I think this book was an interesting read? 

Well,without giving too much away I can tell you that it charts the evolution of the private school chain SABIS from its beginning in Lebanon 125 years ago through to the current day. Prof Tooley has organised in each chapter of the book the key components of the educational model, highlights of the secular humanist ethos, some details on the SABIS flagship schools and the company's wide geographic reach, and the various business models it uses.

He finishes, as one might expect, with a ringing endorsement of the company's senior management personnel and some interesting reflections on why governments are so badly placed to deliver the kinds of quality and scale changes needed within education. There is a particularly good bit I liked where he makes an extended comparison between the airline industry and the education industry. Consumer experience in both is largely determined by the quality and training of the professional service staff, be they air hostesses or teachers. What systems can you put in place to ensure that every passenger or school child comes away with comparably high levels of satisfaction?

So, who would benefit from reading this book? 

If you work for a private education company, as I do, it is very revealing about some of the myths and trends within the education industry at large. If you're interested in unusual public-private partnerships there are some detailed case studies of SABIS' PPP models currently deployed within Kurdistan, Abu Dhabi and the USA. If you're an educational theorist the book is interesting on some of the learning mechanisms and 'big data' tools which SABIS has developed over the years. The company is driven by systems and process, in its desire to industrialize its methods, to reduce costs and educator error. It also seeks to innovate to create a student-led school-wide culture, even fully autonomous "teacherless schools" where students who've learnt how to learn can teach themselves and each other. Finally if you're just interested in being a student of business, in particular of family-run businesses, the entire book is a case study of how a single company can grow from humble beginnings and gradually gain influence in increasingly larger spheres and in different countries.

Some of the quotations that stuck with me while reading I copy out below:

"A bright student is usually better than a mediocre teacher at teaching his or her peers." (Mrs Saad)

Collaboration is more important than competition, and that's why ranking of students is not allowed: "One of the results of rankings,"says Ralph Bistany, "is that one kid has an interest in another kids failure. Nobody in society should have an interest in somebody else's failure."

"We are going against the trend here; we are trying to create a teacher independent classroom. Because if you want to apply it at a scale,it's extremely difficult to build that based on exceptional teachers. You cannot change the level of education worldwide if what you are doing is centered only on the ability of exceptional professionals." (Mrs Saad)

In education, however, governments still second-guess the kind of education required by young people in preparation for adult life and where and how it is delivered. But the mechanisms governments have at their disposal are cumbersome and bureaucratic; in any case, they can't be attuned to issues such as the ways in which humans flourish, central to any ideas of what education is for. (James Tooley)

"All equity investors who came and talked to us were always concerned about their exit strategy after five years. But my short term is 25 years; the long term is the next 100 years." (Carl Bistany)

This last reminds me of the Chairman Mao famous bons mots when asked in the mid 1960s whether he thought the French Revolution of 1789 had been successful.

His reply: "It's too early to tell."

It is true that almost everything to do with education change and reform moves very slowly. I do worry about this, as none of all the well-intentioned reform work we are all now pursuing may even bear fruit for our own children - are there any ways to speed up the lag between policy reform and implementation?  A subject for another post I think.

Finally, I should report that I read the bulk of this book via my iPhone and iPad from the Kindle edition.  While that's a helpful way to get the text I did notice that the hard copy of the book which I ordered for colleagues in the office has pictures in it, which I didn't get on my digital edition. And we all like pictures.  

One major area of interest for me in my work is tackling the problem of reaching children who currently do not go to school at all.  This is Millennium Development Goal Number 2 ("Achieve universal primary education"), which sadly we are still a long way off from achieving by the target date of 2015.

UNESCO have recently published their Education For All Global Monitoring Report (June 2012), see here.  It is worth reading.  I pull out some arresting charts and key quotations, by way of summary:

"Worryingly, the number of out-of-school children has remained at 61 million over the last three years. Much of this global stagnation is due to trends in sub-Saharan Africa, where the number of children out of school has actually risen over the past three years, from 29 million in 2008 to 31 million in 2010. Although enrolment has continued to rise, it has not kept pace with the increase in population." (page 1). 

I had no idea that Nigeria had by over 10m children not in school - double the second most struggling country's out-of-school population, which is Pakistan at 5m children.   I have strong reasons to suspect (since I've been working there, on this area) that Ghana's out-of-school population is understated at 567,000, which makes me wonder what the likely error range might also be on the Nigeria and Pakistan numbers.  It's probable that globally the 61m figure is a conservative estimate (partly for political reasons; governments and donors tend to want to show how much progress has been made since 2000) and in fact the problem is worse than we think it is.  
 



Most alarming is the following insight:

"Of the 61 million children who were out of school in 2010, 47% are expected to never enter school. A further 26% have attended but left school, and the remaining 27% are expected to enter school in the future (Figure 3)." (page 2).  

One of the things the chart above shows is that of the 30.6m out-of-school children in sub-Saharan Africa, a full 55% of them are unlikely ever to enter a school.   The drivers of that are complex and vary from country to country, but poverty, gender and lack of access (i.e. a nearby local school, with available teachers who actually turn up) are recurring themes.

The policy implications for this are in one sense quite clear - African governments and relevant donors should be focussing on solutions which target that 55% who never get to a school in the first place.  We know that building bricks n' mortar schools and extending the often dysfunctional state system is both time consuming, hugely costly, and often partially hostage to political election cycles.  We also know that mobile and web-based education delivery is now a reality and vast amounts of decent quality open-source educational content now exists on the web.  Can there be a way to bypass the former problem by deploying the latter solution?

I for one am hoping that governments, donors, and citizens themselves start to apply real thought to new models of open-source, distance learning, precisely to reach this majority sub-population who never even get to see a school in the first place.  (Investing in nation-wide broadband and mobile coverage in many of these African countries would, I opine, be a good start...but that's the subject of another posting).   

Prof Sugata Mitra's work on Self-Organised Learning Environments (or SOLEs, see his TED talk on this here) is one response to this, as is Prof James Tooley's desire to unlock low-cost private school chains across Africa by liberalising the education supply-side.  Both of these are going to be trends to watch over the next few years, and again, I shall try to touch upon them in separate, dedicated postings.