ZTE deal facts

MANILA, Philippines -- Last April, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was in Hainan, China, to witness the signing of two multimillion-dollar loans to finance the $789-million Cyber Education Project (CEP) and the National Broadband Network (NBN).

In May, the Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) and the Foundation for Worldwide People Power (FWWPP) issued the following statement:

“We view the Cyber Education project -- as well as its hefty price tag -- with deep concern.

“While we welcome more investment into the ailing Philippine education system, we question the wisdom of the chosen input considering the huge amount of funds involved. It is, after all, our firm belief that a key lever for reversing the education crisis is not only the provision of more funds but also how such funds shall be converted into effective inputs.

“We maintain that the priorities for additional funding for education must be the building of a strong foundation for the education system. “Thus, these strategic inputs must include more teachers and teacher training, more classrooms, workbooks for all students, and additional years of basic education.

“Most certainly, $789 million (P35.5 billion) can make a world of difference for any one of these critical gaps. In fact, a study on financing education, completed in 2006 by the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), estimates the 2007 resource gap to meet our Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets for education at P30.6 billion.

“Cyber education is primarily a supplementary tool in education. Academic experts -- both local and international -- agree that such an input helps, but it is not necessary especially in the context of a system with very basic gaps. In fact, the value of supplementary tools is easily nullified in a context of inadequate facilities and ill-trained teachers; in such a situation, the project can therefore become a mere wasteful use of our scarce resources.

“The private sector and civil society have made a commitment to work with government on a non-political platform to help reverse the education crisis through various interventions, programs and projects.

“Invaluable man-hours and a significant amount of funds, not to mention donations from individuals, have been and continue to be mobilized for education.

“Will spending P35.5 billion on a supplementary intervention that may be for naught augur well for our most valuable partnership? Through extensive consultations and dialogues among educators and other experts, the Department of Education and the Commission on Higher Education, concerned business executives and NGOs, a consensus now exists on what are the fundamental and priority needs of Philippine education: more teachers and teacher training, more classrooms, workbooks for all students and two additional years of basic education. We believe addressing these basic needs should be the focus of our combined efforts.

“As its partner in making quality education for all Filipino children a reality, we call on government to instead put the financial resources where they are needed more and where they can make a bigger difference.”

In fact, we are now pursuing a continuing dialogue with the Department of Education on this.

The CEP and NBN elicited closer public scrutiny with the release of a study titled “Lacking a Backbone: The Controversy over the National Broadband Network and the Cyber Education Projects,” done by Dr. Raul V. Fabella and Dr. Emmanuel S. de Dios of the UP School of Economics.

In that paper, the two university professors pointed out that sometime in November 2006, at a Cabinet meeting, President Arroyo “reportedly raised the question whether there was even a need for a government network backbone.” With the signing of the CEP and NBN loans, however, the Philippine government incredibly ended up with two “publicly owned government broadband backbones … when ultimately the only backbone the government needs is a moral one.”

In a recent press conference, Education Secretary Jesli A. Lapus described the CEP as “probably the best thing to happen to public education since the Thomasites.”

At first glance, it certainly seems that way.

Imagine being able to broadcast key learning concepts to every school in the country in real time via satellite, in much the same way our major television stations bring their popular “telenovelas” [TV soaps] and game shows to our TV screens all over the archipelago.

Imagine also a scenario where a public school teacher out there in one of the “barangay” [neighborhood districts] in Marawi City actually interacting with master educators sitting in a TV studio at the DepEd main office in Pasig City, about teaching and learning strategies -- again in real time via satellite.

Now wouldn’t that be something?

Yes it would, and it would be even better if we actually had the high-quality academic infrastructure to leverage a hyperfast content delivery system like this. Apparently, our teachers’ proficiency levels have yet to approach world-quality standards. The majority of our pupils and students can barely master the curriculum-prescribed competencies, and that’s just scratching the surface. The woes of public education are truly mind-boggling.