HOLY FAMILY SCHOOL OF INDANG

Holy Family School of Indang is situated in Barangay Harasan, one of the smallest and poverty-stricken barangays in the Municipality of Indang, Province of Cavite.

 

It is one of 36 barangays in the municipality whose economy is largely agricultural. It has an estimated population of 1,000, with a large incidence of D and E income households who live marginally. Only a few families can be classifed as belonging to C income households or those living above the poverty level. Most families thrive on agricultural means. The families that show some material sufficiency are those whose children had managed to seek employment as Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) either as domestic helpers or as merchant mariners.

 

Harasan is one of the few barangays in the municipality that does not have its own public Elementary School. Its school children have to walk to the next barangay to attend grade school. The few households who can afford to fork out extra spending money for their children’s education manage to send their children to the town proper or the neighboring barangays using public transport (tricycles or jeepneys).

 

Private education is a luxury that only a handful can afford. And yet, the quality of education that most private schools offer leaves much to be desired, vis-a-vis the quality offered by their counterparts in Metro Manila. Public education, on the other hand, is staple fare for a huge segment of the population. And since the state of public education is utterly pitiful compared to private education, one can imagine the quality of students the public schools are capable of turning out.

 

Consider these:

• There are not enough classrooms in public schools.

• There are at least 60 or more students in an average public classroom.

• The quality of public school teachers pales in comparison to their private counterparts, and yet public school

   teachers receive higher pay than private school teachers.

• In public schools, every student passes; nobody gets a failing mark regardless of intellectual capacity.

• Because of funding problems, public school students have hardly any access to books; they borrow books from their teachers on an allocation basis.

• Public school students, especially those from rural areas, are at a great disadvantage against their urban counterparts; they can hardly compete, especially in terms of English-language proficiency and computer literacy.

 

By any yardstick, it is obvious that something needs to be done for rural students, and the time for it is now.