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Media Release
July 19, 2011

Youth and Student groups stage walkout protest versus Pnoy’s poor performance in education

Cotabato City- At least 500 students from a college and universities here and North Cotabato stage a simultaneous walk-out protests from their classes in line with the nationwide protest action over the “poor performance” of Pnoy administration on education sector today.

The said walk-out protests staged in two SUCs in Cotabato City and North Cotabato namely Cotabato City State Polytechnic College (CCSPC) and University of Southern Mindanao (USM) respectively. Students in CCSPC are also joined by students from Notre Dame University (NDU) in support to their calls for a greater state subsidy to education and advancement of their rights to education.

League of Filipino Students (LFS)-CCSPC’s spokesperson Kauthar Usman lamented the saddening situations of Filipino youths being deprived of their right to education. LFS sees the impositions of exorbitant and redundant fees, high matriculation, tuition and miscellaneous fees in different schools in all levels add up to the deprivation of rights and inaccessibility to education of youth.

Militant Liga ng Kabatang Moro (LKM) which is known for its firmed stand on the K+12 have lambasted the Department of Education’s Enhance 12-year Basic Education program saying that it will just worsen the condition of students considering that there is high scarcity of teachers, classrooms and facilities in both basic and tertiary education across the country.

‘Another two-year for basic education will burden more the students and our parents given our insufficient wages and unstable economic condition of the country. It will bring no significant impact to the lives of Moro youth especially when those scarcities are vividly seen in our communities resulted as effects of long years of armed conflict’, said Yusoph Sabpa, spokesperson of LKM.

A union of student councils and student leaders also joined the protest because of the insincerity of Pnoy administration to end up the worsening situations of State Universities and Colleges or SUCs in the country. The National Union of Students of the Philippines or NUSP were dismay over the almost one-year performance of Pnoy in education.

NUSP states that albeit there is 207B pesos allotted for basic education this year, this only mean that it gets a 2.69 per cent chunk of total GDP that makes it insignificant and insufficient.

“That 2.69 per cent which the basic education gets from 2010 country’s GDP doesn’t even reach the half of 6% as recommended by United Nation’s Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization or UNESCO. This only shows that education is never a priority of this administration. We denounce this administration for the lack of political will and sympathy to end up the skyrocketing number of drop-outs and out-of-school youths”, said NUSP Coordinator Saddam Kasim.

Based on the records of NUSP, there are 7.93 million out of school youth from basic and tertiary schools and still ballooning. Accordingly, the lessening number of SUCs operating in the country brought a large impact to the ballooning number of youth who can’t access to education. To date, a total of 110 SUCs including USM and CCSPC are still operating but are threatened to increase their tuition fees due to insufficient budgets.

Various militant youth group like ANAKBAYAN and College Editors Guild of the Philippines (CEGP) also joined the protest rally signifying their support and initial protest activity to the upcoming PNoy’s State of the Nation Address (SONA) on July 25, 2011.

For reference:

Yusoph Sabpa Kauthar Usman Dimacisil
Spokesperson, LKM Spokesperson, LFS
Mobile # 09352084783 Mobile # 09269202212