NATIONAL UNION OF STUDENTS OF THE PHILIPPINES (NUSP)
 
February 2, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 
Students and teachers present ‘8-point education reform agenda’
Challenge Palace-led education summit
 
The National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP) along with other youth and student groups and the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) challenged the Malacañang-sponsored education summit with their own ‘8-point Education Reform Agenda’ in a press conference today.
 
NUSP national president Alvin Peters said the ‘anti-student’ education summit was nothing more than a “rehash of existing privatization and deregulation policies for education” and that “any reforms proposed during the summit would only serve to worsen the education crisis.”
 
 “We are dismayed, to say the least, that nowhere during the education summit was there mention of how to address the basic problem of rising cost of education brought about by privatization and commercialization schemes and/or how to resolve these through a genuine means of regulating annual increases in tuition and other fees,” said Peters.
 
Citing data from the Commission on Higher Education, Peters disclosed that in the past five years, tuition had been increasing annually at an average rate of almost twelve percent. “Last school year alone, twenty-five percent of all private higher education institutions (PHEIs) increased their tuition with the national average tuition increase at 10.09 percent,” Peters revealed.  
 
“Next school year, we expect even more private schools to increase tuition at sky-high rates on account of the president’s favoring private school owners by her decision not to impost a tuition cap,” Peters said. He was referring to the Pres. Arroyo’s earlier statement affirming the re-implementation of CHED Memo Order 13 as the guidelines for schools intending to raise tuition rates. The suspension of the previous CMO 14, which had been amended to impose a tuition cap, marked the lifting of said tuition cap.
 
NUSP and other student and youth groups together with ACT presented an ‘8-point Education Reform Agenda’ which Peters announced would be their proposal to Congress and which the group said they would lobby for in the coming months.
 
The recommended reforms include: increasing the education budget, use of Filipino as the medium of instruction, improvement of teachers’ welfare, a moratorium on tuition and other fee increases, the development of a nationalist and relevant curriculum, investment in science, research and technology development, transparency in education programs and upholding democratic rights in schools.
 
In the same press conference, the student groups announced their plans of filing administrative and criminal charges against the Western Police District for the violent dispersal of their members during a rally at the education summit, in which six students and teachers were arrested and dozens more injured.
 
“We have every intention of bringing to the bars of justice all the police officers involved in the harsh and brutal dispersal of our fellow student leaders,” said Peters.
 
“We hope that by doing so, no such incident happens again to innocent student groups whose only intention is to peacefully express their valid concerns,” he said.
 
Reference:
Alvin Peters
National President, 09206209362