The world wants no new promises
This was what United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said in his foreword for the 2007 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report.
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The Report presented a comprehensive progress assessment of the MDGs in the various nations. Producing uneven results, it showed that while there were already visible and widespread gains, there were still areas that need to be paid more attention to. However, it is good to note that progress catering to the world’s children has been significantly made.
More children have been in school particularly in the developing countries. Enrolment in primary education increased from 80 percent in 1991 to 88 percent in 2005. Furthermore, child mortality has declined globally. The Report said that the right life-saving interventions are proven effective in reducing the number of children’s death due to the main killers, such as measles.
In the Philippines, however, much have to be done to improve the lives of the Filipino children. While the global Report said that access to education has relatively improved in the developing world, the country needs to boost its efforts in this area.
According to the Philippines Midterm Progress Report on the Millennium Development Goals, access to primary education in the country has worsened during the schoolyear 2005-2006. The participation rate in elementary education of pupils aged 6-11 declined from 96.8 percent in 2000 to 84.4 percent in its 2006.
The cohort survival rate (CSR) at elementary level was at a low 69.9 percent as of 2005 still far from the 2015 target of 84.67 percent. The Midterm Report said that this indicates that the retention ability of schools calls for improvement. Moreover, dropout rates at the elementary level showed an increasing trend from 2001 to 2005.
Meanwhile, the completion rate was placed at 67.99 percent in 2005. This is also way below the 2015 target of 81.04 percent. The Midterm Report said that the weak ability of the government to provide complete basic education services in more than 7,000 barangays in the country may be one of the reasons for the low completion rate.
The Midterm Report likewise disclosed that there were more disadvantaged children in the rural than in the urban areas because of the high number of uncompleted schoolbuildings in the said area, higher malnutrition rates and more incidence of child labor. In 2001, seven out of 10 working children aged five to 17 resided in the rural areas.
Hence, the Midterm Report recommended to accelerate the implementation of basic education and health reforms where two major reform packages for the two sectors must be implemented “with critical interventions supported by an effective management structure and financing arrangements.
In a study by Rosario Manasan, the country needs to produce resources ranging from PhP605.3 billion to PhP777.9 billion to meet the MDG targets in 2015. The financing gap is estimated at PhP87.5 billion to PhP94.6 billion. The study said that estimates of expenditures on basic education for the period 2007 to 2015 show the largest funding gap of PhP349 billion.
Yet, these promises remain to be fulfilled.
The MDGs are still achievable if we act now.
These are also the words of UN Secretary General Ki-Moon, stated in the 2007 MDG Report.
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