Credits

Friday, June 02, 2006

The Numbers Say It All

In a recent comment in PCIJ, I asked if anyone can do the math on Bagong Tanyag Elementary School for me. Tongue in, anew, a regular commenter had this to say.

"Schumey, I doubt it's possible to get a 1:800 ratio... UNLESS...you have 4 shifts of 4 hours each, for a class size of 200 each in the same classroom. That means classes start at 6AM for the first shift and ends at 10PM for the 4th shift.
I can't imagine how you can pack together 200 students in one regular sized room. I can't also imagine every teacher in Bagong Tanyag attending to 800 students for 16 hours everyday, that's brutal, isn't it?
Now your question of how to bring it down to the 1:50 ratio, diivide 800 by 50 = 16. That means that for every classroom now in that school 16 more have to be built PLUS allowance for population growth. The primetime news said that Bagong Tanyag Elem School has only "over 20 classrooms" and most classrooms have cracks and that the rain falls on students inside the rooms. (A classroom-to-pupil ratio of 1:800 and a classroom count of 20 makes 16,000 total student population for a small public school, and thus, to me, is unbelievable for now.)
A minimum of 320 classrooms to a maximum 494 have to be built."

Can GMA imagine the strain she puts on our children? I do not know where she got her numbers, but this only shows how insensitive this president is to the plight of our students. OFW's in Japan had poured in Y 6m in "Gloria's Classroom Program", and this is only one of the programs that is suppose to help maintain and build new classrooms. I hope these funds were not diverted to another "Presidential Social Program".

In the end, the numbers say it all.

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