Complementarity and private school closures: In search of a lost government
In November 2020, the College of the Holy Spirit Manila founded more than a century ago, announced that it is closing down this year 2022. A month after, the Holy Cross of Davao College management admitted that it is suffering from financial woes and is forced to retrench all its employees in 2021.
Just recently, the Colegio de San Lorenzo in Quezon City made it to the banner headlines of the national dailies when it issued a notice of closure at the start of the school year after accepting students for the current school year.
Those schools are just a handful among the other private schools that closed shop due to financial hardships. Their demise caught the attention of the media. But many other schools vanished without much media hype.
Private schools play an important role in educating the learners and molding the students into good and productive citizens of this country based on the institution’s vision, mission, and goals.
While public schools offer the same or similar programs, the values and culture that each school imbibes into their students spell the big difference between public and private schools. And to the learners and their parents, the variety of options enhances the opportunity to receive education and training from the learning institution that offers the most appropriate programs for each learner.
Except for very few private schools that have diversified sources of funds, most private schools rely on the tuition and miscellaneous fees they collect to pay for the salaries and benefits of their faculty and other operating expenses.
Often, private schools rely on loans to finance their capital expenditures with the monthly loan amortizations sourced from the students’ tuition fees. For this reason, private schools have a higher market risk, which means that a significant decrease in enrollment can lead to a default on their obligations. Those entangled in the debt trap have difficulty escaping the vicious cycle of financial miseries.
Private schools face enrollment problems not because of fierce competition among fellow private schools. While their hands are tied with stringent regulations, private schools must contend with government policies disregarding their existence.
True, free college education aims to give better access to education, especially for the poor. But free college education offered by adjacent local government units building local colleges like mushrooms in a small field is a recipe to drive private schools out of existence.
Under the Constitution, the State recognizes the complementary roles of public and private institutions in the educational system and shall exercise reasonable supervision and regulation of all educational institutions.” (Article XIV, Section 4 (1)). Complementarity has no fixed definition, but the most straightforward definition is supplying mutual needs or offsetting mutual lacks.
With the current situation, wherein private schools are subjected to very stringent regulations amid the “opening spree” of colleges by the LGUs; the government may have allowed an unbridled license to exterminate private schools eventually. By then, in the hands of a tyrant God forbids, learners will be like robots programmed to follow orders and with no freedom to explore the vast universe of knowledge and free expression.