School and work in the Philippines: Is the cost too high?

This chapter examines the various aspects of the education/employment connection in the Philippines, and addresses two very broad areas. The first is concerned with the question; what is unique about the Philippines? The second is concerned with one of the main problems which bedevils much of educational argument, namely the relationship between efficiency and equity and how educational aims centralized around these two realities also confound so many educational planners and administrators. Although the Philippines obviously has technical schools and colleges and a well-developed agricultural educational sector, these efforts have hardly dented the academic character of the high school or the fact that only 2.6 percent of tertiary students are enrolled in agriculture courses. A few variables are in the family life: socio-economic status, parents’ occupation, their educational achievements, gender, location of family and home attitudes to school and work