Private schools matter, too

By Herman M. Lagon

When Congress talks about the education budget, the biggest numbers naturally get the microphone. DepEd, CHED, TESDA, and our state universities and colleges deserve serious attention. They educate millions of Filipinos, and government has a duty to fund them well. But somewhere between the billions, percentages, and budget hearings, we can easily miss the small private school in a provincial town — the one beside the parish church or along the highway, the college everyone simply calls by its initials, the school that has quietly educated generations without ever becoming a household name.

I find it hard to see education as public versus private because both have shaped my family and me. My mother taught in two private colleges and a university for a combined 40 years. I spent 21 years teaching in private basic education, have accumulated about 20 years as a student in two private universities, and briefly taught in an autonomous private university. Today, I am a professor at a state university and a graduate of two others. My daughters also went from private basic education to a state university. I have seen enough of both worlds to know that pitting one against the other helps neither our schools nor our students.

I now see firsthand why SUCs need stronger funding. Good education needs decent facilities, student support, research, faculty development, and innovation. But my years in private education taught me another reality: Private does not necessarily mean wealthy. That word covers everything from large schools with established brands, substantial enrollment, alumni networks, and diversified income to a small college or parochial school in a provincial town counting every enrollee because 20 fewer students can already hurt.

The larger and older institutions usually have more room to absorb difficult years. Their names carry weight. Families know them. Alumni return. Enrollment may dip and eventually recover. Some have property, foundations, auxiliary income, or other resources to fall back on. The small private school has fewer cushions. When enrollment falls, there may be no large reserve waiting downstairs. Sometimes the choice becomes painfully ordinary: postpone the laboratory upgrade, delay repairs, combine classes, leave a position vacant, or somehow make the old equipment last another year.

Then there is the salary gap, perhaps one of the least comfortable realities to discuss. Public school teachers and SUC faculty generally work within government salary structures, with standardized salary grades, benefits, and pensions. Many small private schools simply cannot match those packages on top of their heavy workloads. A talented young teacher may love her school, her students, and the community, but affection does not pay rent, groceries, children’s tuition, or aging parents’ medicines. When a DepEd or SUC position offers substantially better compensation and security, we should hardly blame her for applying. The source material itself identifies the migration of teachers to public schools as one of the pressures that prompted proposals to strengthen assistance to private education.

This creates a cruel little cycle. A small school loses students, so revenue falls. With less revenue, it struggles to improve salaries. Good teachers leave for better-paying government positions. The school then has to find replacements while already stretching limited resources. Families, meanwhile, naturally compare private school tuition with free or subsidized public education.

None of this means government should rescue every struggling private school. Public money should never become an ATM for poor management. A school seeking taxpayer support must meet quality standards, treat employees fairly, maintain transparent finances, submit to proper auditing, and demonstrate that assistance actually benefits learners. A century-old façade is not a financial plan. Neither is an impressive school seal.

But neither should we wait for good small schools to close before realizing what they were doing for us.

We already accept this principle in basic education. Through mechanisms such as Educational Service Contracting and SHS vouchers, government helps eligible students study in participating private schools. The logic is practical. If a qualified private school already has teachers, classrooms, and empty seats, government does not always need to construct another building to educate every additional learner. Private capacity can complement the public system, particularly where government schools are congested.

Congress has also considered expanding such assistance. Proposals have sought broader vouchers across basic education, with priority given to vulnerable and lower-income families, while discussions have recognized falling private school enrollment and teacher migration as real concerns. This deserves another serious look — not as a bailout for school owners, but as assistance to students and families who should have meaningful choices about where they study.

Higher education deserves similar imagination. The Tertiary Education Subsidy and Tulong Dunong Program already show that government support can reach qualified students in both public and private institutions. PIDS has likewise raised the possibility of making higher education financing more student-centered, allowing assistance to follow learners among qualified institutions. Properly designed, this could make use of available private capacity and perhaps relieve some pressure on crowded public universities.

But let us be clear: Helping private schools should not mean taking money away from SUCs. A student subsidy and a university appropriation solve different problems. A grant can help a poor student remain in college. It cannot by itself buy laboratory equipment, finance university research, repair buildings, improve campus internet, hire faculty, or sustain extension programs. We need to fund the learner and the institution doing the learning — and we need public and private schools strong enough to complement rather than cannibalize one another.

Government could also look beyond tuition assistance. Why not make more faculty development scholarships and research grants accessible to qualified teachers in small private institutions? Why not study incentives for schools serving places where educational choices are limited? Why not provide carefully designed financing for laboratories, digital infrastructure, and other improvements, with strict accountability attached? Assistance should be targeted precisely because private schools are not created equal. A famous university with thousands of students and a small provincial college with three aging buildings may share the label “private,” but their bank accounts probably have very different personalities.

A small school is part of the livelihood of a town. Its teachers and staff earn their living there. Students eat at nearby carinderias, ride local tricycles, rent rooms, photocopy notes, and buy school supplies. And for a family counting every peso, a college nearby may be the only affordable way to keep a child in school.

Research puts numbers behind that familiar story. A 2014 study of seven private HEIs and 210 respondents in Cagayan de Oro found that financial assistance helped students continue their studies, with benefits reaching employment and the local economy. It is not a nationwide study, but the lesson is recognizable: Being admitted is one thing; being able to stay is another.

I have seen teachers in private schools do extraordinary work despite modest pay. I have also seen colleagues in public higher education stretch limited resources because student needs keep growing. In both places, people improvise, share, adjust, borrow, repair, and somehow make things work. We call that diskarte. It is admirable when it reflects creativity. It becomes troubling when an education system begins depending on it.

So, yes, fund DepEd properly. Give SUCs the resources their responsibilities require. Strengthen free higher education and student assistance. But while Congress examines the 2027 budget, it should also look down the road from the big university and notice the smaller school whose signboard may be fading a little. Some famous private institutions will probably weather another difficult year. It is the small basic education school and provincial private college, with little financial cushion and no famous name to carry it, that may need us to look twice.

The goal is not to save every private school. Schools must earn public confidence through quality, integrity, and accountability. The goal is to make sure good ones do not disappear simply because education policy forgot they were part of the same ecosystem.

After years spent on one side and now working on the other, I have become less interested in asking whether public or private education deserves more sympathy. The child in the classroom does not need us to win that argument. The child needs a good teacher, a good school, and a fair chance to learn — whatever name happens to be written above the gate.

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Doc H fondly describes himself as a ‘student of and for life’ who, like many others, aspires to a life-giving and why-driven world grounded in social justice and the pursuit of happiness. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the institutions that employ him or with which he is connected.