In 2004 Trends in International Math & Science Survey (TIMSS), the country ranked 41 out of 45 countries for high school Math and 42 out of 45 for high school Science. For Grade school, it ranked 23 out of 25 countries for both Math and Science. With this, one question pops out: "How low can the Philippines go?"

According to Department of Education OIC Fe Hidalgo, the quality of education in the country continues to decline. "More and more students no longer qualify to the requirements of respective jobs available in the country," she reports. The public education system in the country is slowly deteriorating due to insufficient resources and low quality of education. "The system, as we know, has been in crisis for the last 30 years in terms of achievement level," she further explains.

Still according to her, the roots of education crisis include the under investment in education, institutionalized stagnation, and poor management. "What we are trying to do is to develop measures wherein all Filipinos could acquire basic education competencies." This could be achieved by developing in children the ability to learn in non-natural settings; develop the ability to learn numerical literacy; and to learn higher order thinking skills. "We should all eye for functional literacy by transforming schools into community-based institutions," she states.

One of the causes that have been always plaguing the system year after year is the lack of resources. The 2005 resource gaps indicate how the government under-invest in the education system: there are a total of 8,684 classrooms, 26.85M textbooks, 2.24M seats, and 20,874 teachers shortage.

In the Philippines, part of the crisis in the public education system is the growing digital divide. In fact, recent studies of the DepEd show that only about six percent of public schools have facilities that give students Internet training and access. In addition, only 39 percent of the country’s public high schools have computer equipment platforms that can be wired to the Internet. This—among so many problems in shortage of facilities—lead to another form of poverty: the poverty of knowledge.

Indeed, this kind of poverty is now becoming one of the biggest predicaments the leaders of the world has to mull over. Trying to do its share in solving this piece of puzzle, Ayala Foundation, Inc. in cooperation with the government and executives from the private sector, has decided to launch Gearing up Internet Literacy and Access for Students (GILAS)—an education initiative that aims to link students in public high schools to the Internet by providing Internet lab and other useful educational tools—last January. GILAS’s main goal is to provide Internet access for students and basic literacy programs in all the 5,443 public secondary schools in the country in the next five years.

Since the initiative requires the participation of local government units in implementing the program especially in the different provinces in the country, a cocktail reception was organized to help the students of yet another city to be linked to the Internet—the Iloilo City.

Held at the Filipinas Heritage Library recently, the gathering paved the way for Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas to seek help from other organizations to implement the program in his city. According to Mayor Treñas, because of the strategic location of Iloilo City, it is fast becoming the preferred business and government gateway to the flourishing region of Western Visayas. But according to him, the city will not get there if they do not pay appropriate attention to the development of its manpower pool and reassure the business sector and potential investors of a steady supply of a relevantly skilled ready manpower complement. "It is in this light that that we are paying special attention to the quality of education of our high school students who would comprise the bulk of skilled workforce in the future." Still according to him, the program hopes to bring the city’s high school students to the information age and give them a chance to compete with not just the best in the country but also best in the world.

Most Filipino youths believe that finishing high school is enough for them to join the work force. Little do they know that such low level of education is itself a stern handicap because work-force productivity and competitiveness depend much on the modern worker’s ability to harness the tools and resources available especially on the Internet.

In today’s modern age, computer and the Internet play a vital role in education. It is an imperative that these are just some of the new resources any school must possess. But, as of December of last year, only 40 percent of public schools have computer laboratories accessible to students, and less than six percent of these laboratories are connected to the Internet.

According to GILAS program director Luigi Bernas, providing access to the Internet is the most cost-efficient educational intervention that the private sector can make given the Philippines’s fiscal constraints. "We feel that by providing Internet access to public high school students, we are helping them connect to a brighter tomorrow."

The presentation prepared by GILAS also backs up Bernas’ assessment that inadequate Internet connectivity and literacy is a critical weakness in the Information Age. The report also reveals the sad fact that the huge budget deficit and the country’s myriad of needs make it difficult for the government to increase its education spending. This lack of spending manifests itself in the lack of classrooms and teachers, poorly trained teachers, underdeveloped curricula, and practically non-existent libraries. "As a result, the quality of graduates from the public school system has been rapidly declining…[and] this under-education has severely handicapped the new participants in the national and global workforce."

Bernas says that with the Internet, they have found a powerful and efficient tool to address the education gap among the country’s youth. "Through Gilas, we can provide access to the Internet that democratizes information-giving [thus] students get free access to electronic encyclopedias that aid in research, math, science, and languages."

Since libraries in the public school system are in poor condition and in need of basic books, Bernas believes that the Internet access could provide a partial immediate solution to the problem. "Computer labs in schools could provide the tools for computer training, which prepares high-school student for jobs in the fast-growing business process outsourcing industry and other fields requiring basic computer skills," he says. "Also, computers and Internet access facilitate networking among schools and promote the sharing of teaching modules, the standardization of material, and teacher training."

Technology—through Internet—is indeed a powerful and efficient tool to address the education gap among the country’s youth because it gives students a free hand to a variety of information that could help them gain more knowledge.