Education International Research
According to Lumad communities, attacks on schools and harassment of the Lumad population have worsened since Mindanao was placed under martial law on 23 May 2017. Martial law has been extended multiple times, and it is approved until the end of 2019.
Defending the right to education The Alliance for Concerned Teachers, an education union representing educators from primary, secondary and tertiary levels, is a member of the Save our Schools network, which campaigns to raise awareness of and stop the militarisation of Lumad communities. In an effort to enable Lumad students to have access to quality education despite intimidation and the closing down of their schools, ACT has supported the development and running of a Bakwit (evacuee school) for 75 students at the University of the Philippines in Manila. These representatives from years 3–10 come from four different Lumad schools and are taught by 15 teachers from Mindanao, as well as numerous volunteer teachers from the University of the Philippines. ACT is involved in recruiting and coordinating the volunteers, for example by informing them that volunteering at the Bakwit school can be accredited as part of their teaching workload. Teachers have donated food and other resources to help the Bakwit school function. The “evacuee” school aims to replicate the curriculum that indigenous students received at indigenous schools in Mindanao and includes both “core” subjects and subjects related to the indigenous culture. On 29 March 2019, a “moving-up ceremony” was held, showing that the students were able to complete the standard curriculum requirements for the year.
Educators call for urgent action The Philippines is submitting a Voluntary National Review this year, but this report is highly unlikely to recognise the militarisation of schools in Mindanao. Educators and students from Mindanao want to go home and continue to teach and learn in safety and without harassment. Currently, however, students say that they are still at risk from armed forces. According to ACT, new schools are being built in the area in which students are taught by the military, and “community members are obliged to transfer their children to these schools lest they be accused of rebellion”. Educators from around the globe 137 have condemned the continued harassment of and attacks against students, teachers and human rights activists from the Lumad indigenous communities, and they call on the government of the Philippines to end martial law and ensure that the right to quality education for all indigenous students is fulfilled. EI calls on the Philippines to endorse the Guidelines for Protecting Schools and Universities from Military Use During Armed Conflict, an intergovernmental instrument to protect students, teachers, schools and universities from attacks.
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Segregation and exclusion of vulnerable populations have increased due to growing commercialisation of education
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Market reforms in education, which have intensified since 2015, aim to provide parents with the freedom to select their school of choice and improve education quality through competition between institutions. However, the poor often have very little choice in practice, and commercialisation leads to segregation of students as privately operated institutions “cream skim” students and exclude marginalised learners. Unions in both Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago point out that although primary and secondary education in their countries is free, the level of quality varies greatly between schools. Segregation is a major issue, and schools with large numbers of vulnerable students are often those with the least resources, rendering them less able to provide adequate support systems to identify and address student needs. 137 Education unions in solidarity include: the Australian Education Union/Australia; the Confederaçao Nacional dos Trabalhadores em Educação/Brazil; the Syndicat des enseignants bulgares/Bulgaria; the Asociación Nacional de Educadores/Costa Rica; the Fédération Formation et Enseignement PrivésConfédération française démocratique du travail/France; the Fédération Syndicale Professionnelle de l'Education/Guinea; the Japan Teachers’ Union/Japan; the Utdanningsforbundet/Norway; the Organización de Trabajadores de la Educación del Paraguay/Paraguay; the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers and the National Union of Teachers/United Kingdom; and the National Education Association/United States of America.
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