Philippines education standards today

[Terry P]

4 minutes ago, TerryP said:

Correct as usual

Tax avoidance is the respectable handle

Collected his CBE in 1998

At least he waited for a while before jumping ship

[Mike J]

12 hours ago, Snowy79 said:

What I found was the standard of education in the area I was in is shocking, a fact backed up by many foreigners who moved back to their countries with their kids to give them a chance at a decent education.  I'm not saying there's no good schools around or that they can't get their education for free but it's only the lessons that are free.  I know a few families that are struggling to buy their book, band paper and craft items needed to complete their course work.

Agree.  It is the uniforms, field trips expenses, etc. in addition to the ones to mentioned that put a "free education" out of reach for some families, especially at the university level.  My wife and I sponsor a number of students in high school and college to try and make sure they are able to continue their education.  We tell them to "pay it forward" when they can find work "after they graduate".  Help someone else from a poor family break the cycle of poverty when they need the same help you have received.

[Old55]

36 minutes ago, Mike J said:

Agree.  It is the uniforms, field trips expenses, etc. in addition to the ones to mentioned that put a "free education" out of reach for some families, especially at the university level.  My wife and I sponsor a number of students in high school and college to try and make sure they are able to continue their education.  We tell them to "pay it forward" when they can find work "after they graduate".  Help someone else from a poor family break the cycle of poverty when they need the same help you have received.

Well done Mike. It must be gratifying to see those young people grow into successful adults. 

We have done the same with mixed results. Our Niece and Nephew have done little with their education partly to do with the pandemic. Other family members have done well with a trade school.

[Old55]

There are a few world class K-12 schools in Cebu City area. But its not cheap even by western standards. There are some small academy's K-6 we know of that are very good. Again not cheap but less than the larger ones.

Not to put down Philippines we choose to have our boys educated here in the US. There are flaws in our educational system but overall is a good choice for us. The other advantage is the ability to easily move onto full time work here after graduation. In most cases career opportunities are severely lacking in Philippines.

 

[Shady]

9 minutes ago, Old55 said:

There are a few world class K-12 schools in Cebu City area. But its not cheap even by western standards.

Shockingly high tuition at those 2 schools.

 

12 minutes ago, Old55 said:

 we choose to have our boys educated here in the US...in most cases career opportunities are severely lacking in Philippines.

True, mostly limited to tourism and related industries. But where is it more likely that students are happier; the US or the PH?  And when they find careers, where are they going to live happier lives? Easy answers if you're familiar with both.

 

[Snowy79]

5 hours ago, TerryP said:

As recently as November last Dyson announced they are opening an R&D and software development facility in the Philippines employing 400 engineers in the software department alone as part of their global development programme. They claim they will have no problems finding the necessary talent in the country.

If the Philippines education system is in such disarray and a fair proportion of the younger generation are not getting a decent standard of education for whatever reason shouldn't they be advised of the error of their judgement

 

The Philippines does have a well established Information Technology system developed over 25yrs to service a lot of Business Process Outsourcing. My ex partner had completed 2yrs in Cebu at a good university studying the hardware manufacturing side for her degree, unfortunately finances decreed she couldn't continue even though she had earned a free scholarship.  When she partnered up with me she looked at finishing her degree but I lived on Mindoro and the only suitable courses were in Manila, Cebu and Kalibo which discounted her as we would have to up sticks and I was on one year lease where I lived. Plus at my age I never wanted City life having already escped Manila where I lasted 3 months. There was only a few places available also and hundreds of appicants.

It would be interesting to know how many from the Provinces move to the Cities to study or are the vast majority of places taken by residents of the City.

As for Dyson they have moved their Headquarters to Singapore where the vast majority of their work will be, if the were after skill sets they would have moved to Estonia, Romania, India etc where some of the top technology experts are churned out. It's probably got nothing to do with lax tax laws, Golden Handshakes or the fact that on average a Filipino with a technology degree is on a 10th of that in the West.  The Dyson hub will be in Alabang and only some of the jobs are in software development, many jobs will be for the following and filled by many nationalities as taken from the Dyson Chief Engineer, Scott Maguire. 

• Automation test engineers
• Scrum masters
• Product owners
• Program managers
• Release train engineers
• Team leaders

 

[hk blues]

9 hours ago, TerryP said:

As recently as November last Dyson announced they are opening an R&D and software development facility in the Philippines employing 400 engineers in the software department alone as part of their global development programme. They claim they will have no problems finding the necessary talent in the country.

If the Philippines education system is in such disarray and a fair proportion of the younger generation are not getting a decent standard of education for whatever reason shouldn't they be advised of the error of their judgement

Everyone in this topic I think is in agreement that there is a certain amount of good education facilities but is that the obviously limited amount of talent pool will be snapped up by the players already in the field

Terry, the Philippines is a country of 110 million people - the fact that a global business can attract 400 software engineers isn't really indicative of either a good or bad education system.

The evaluation of the quality of the education system here is very subjective - depending on our expectation and baseline.  For reference, the University of The Philippines - one of the top public universities here - is ranked 396th in the world.  Is that good or bad? 

[hk blues]

3 hours ago, Old55 said:

There are a few world class K-12 schools in Cebu City area. But its not cheap even by western standards. There are some small academy's K-6 we know of that are very good. Again not cheap but less than the larger ones.

Not to put down Philippines we choose to have our boys educated here in the US. There are flaws in our educational system but overall is a good choice for us. The other advantage is the ability to easily move onto full time work here after graduation. In most cases career opportunities are severely lacking in Philippines.

 

It's an underlying dillema for me - I simply don't want to return to the UK and sending our son there alone isn't an option (too expensive) so we stay here.  I think the standard of education my son is getting here is comparable but the career opportunities are better back home - again, in my opinion.

[hk blues]

8 hours ago, TerryP said:

Correct as usual

Tax avoidance is the respectable handle

Not sure, but headline Corporate Tax rate in the UK is 19%, in Singapore it's 17%.  Not so significantly different so may be other considerations.

[Old55]

24 minutes ago, hk blues said:

It's an underlying dillema for me - I simply don't want to return to the UK and sending our son there alone isn't an option (too expensive) so we stay here.  I think the standard of education my son is getting here is comparable but the career opportunities are better back home - again, in my opinion.

HK, understand your choice and for sure you are not the only one thinking that way. Your son has options for quality schooling inside Philippines and I hope you live reasonably close to one. As a young adult he may choose to move back to UK or not.