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Students of Pinyahan Elementary School, supervised by their respective teachers, initiate their 'Catch-up Fridays' program by reading storybooks inside their classrooms on January 12, 2024. The Department of Education has designated all Fridays starting  January 12 and throughout the school year as Catch-up Fridays, focusing on operationalizing the National Reading Program (NRP) in the first half of the day’s schedule and on fostering Values, Health, and Peace Education in the second half, to address learning gaps among grade school and high school students. Maria Tan, ABS-CBN News

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DEPED-CATCHUP

Jekki Pascual

ABS-CBN News

MANILA — A new World Bank report released on Monday urged the Philippines to urgently ramp up investments in human capital development, as the the country still lags behind in education, health, social protection and other indicators.The report revealed that many Filipino children are not healthy and are not learning. Malnutrition and stunting have affected many young Filipinos, which in effect also affect their educational performance. The country has also seen dismal learning outcomes in general, and low performance in national and international standardized tests.Aside from problems in health and education, many of the working age population have low-quality jobs and many are dealing with undiagnosed and untreated health conditions as well.The Philippines’ Human Capital Index is 0.52 or lower than Indonesia’s 0.54, Thailand’s 0.61, Malaysia’s 0.61, and Vietnam’s 0.64. This means, an adult Filipino achieves just over half of his or her productive potential.“The country needs to catch up on access to good quality education, access to good quality healthcare services, good quality jobs, and good quality social protection,” said Ndiame Diop, World Bank Country Director for the Philippines and other countries in the region.The report said the government must focus on the first few years of a child— such as strengthening early childhood development programs, scale up nutrition-sensitive interventions, prioritize social protection for the vulnerable.“Invest now in the early years. These are children who are aged between 0 and 10 because this is where you will lead to the maximum benefit evidence-based basically. That investment needs to be holistic,” said World Bank economist and report co-author Toni Joe Lebbos.National Economic and Development Authority Secretary Arsenio Balisacan acknowledged the findings of the report and agreed that solutions are urgently needed especially since there is time-limited period to reap the maximum benefits of such human capital investments.Balisacan said the fertility rate in the country is falling, which means there will be a shrinking workforce in one generation or 20-25 years’ time. The time to invest in human capital is now, he said, so when the kids grow up, the country will still have a huge working population which has been properly trained and educated with right skills. This will help the economy, even if the young population dwindles in a few decades.“If you are underinvesting now that means 20-25 years later when they joined the labor force, then they are unproductive… Once you missed that, productivity will be lower in the future. Poverty is often inter-generational,” said Balisacan.The NEDA chief said the government is already starting to invest in human capital development like the food stamp program, institutionalizing the country’s conditional cash transfer program, and many other projects.Balisacan also wants to help strengthen the capacity of local government units (LGUs) because they are usually the ones responsible in directly implementing many social programs.“Inter-agency coordination particularly between local governments and national government. Because you see the disparity, the large variation in the effectiveness of LGUs. There are some LGU’s who are doing well, but there are so many others who are not,” he said.Diop, the outgoing World Bank Country Director, remains optimistic the Philippines can improve its human capital index to help its goal of reaching its target of becoming an upper-middle-income country in a few year’s time. He said the country’s economic figures have been growing since 2010 excluding the pandemic. What&#x27;s needed to be done is to translate the economic growth to human capital improvements.

The Philippines’ Human Capital Index is 0.52 or lower than Indonesia’s 0.54, Thailand’s 0.61, Malaysia’s 0.61, and Vietnam’s 0.64.

The Philippines’ Human Capital Index is 0.52 or lower than Indonesia’s 0.54, Thailand’s 0.61, Malaysia’s 0.61, and Vietnam’s 0.64.

PH urged to improve investments in education, health for children

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PH urged to improve investments in education, health for children

Jekki Pascual,

ABS-CBN News

Published Jun 24, 2024 07:54 PM PHT

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World Bank

human capital index

education

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