⌛ Prospects for children in Philippines

Hi,

I am an Australian married to a Filipina living in Perth Western Australia. I will retire next month and plan to move to Dumaguete with my wife and 2 kids. I have a girl aged 12 and a boy aged 3. My son was born in Australia and my daughter is a Filipina.

The reason for me to move countries is that I can live OK with my aged pension in the Philippines but it is impossible in Australia I also do not have much superannuation.

My main concern is what prospects my son will have once he is of working age to get a decent job in the Philippines. I am hoping that maybe in 10 - 15 years things will improve and the economy will take off with tourism or electronics/manufacturing, I refuse to beleive that the Philippines will continue to drift along with bad politicians and corruption forever. Most people with degrees and qualifications in PI move away to work overseas.

Has anyone else done the unthinkable and moved from a first world country to the Philippines and their children have managed to get a good job? I look forward to your replies and advice.

Alan R

 

Too optimistic.

Although we have housing and family support in Dumaguete it is precisly because I am not happy with education in the PI that I am keeping my children schooled in the US at least until college age anyway. I think 10 or 15 years to improve is very optimistic. As long as the educated Pinoy and service worker can make more money overseas, the PI will not improve. I think Aquino's attempt to lengthen the years of education is a step in the right direction but I will bet there is no money for such a move. I have many expat Pinoys for neighbors in the US and most will not move back and that goes double for their children unless they become models.

You should be able to survive but you will need to get your children extra tutoring to bring their standards up or stay ontop of their education and watch them like a hawk. They will and can get an education but you might not be happy with it. There are some older expats who's children were educated in the PI system and it seems they turned out OK and there are some new arrivals who are just starting to have their children in the schools system. As they experience it perhaps they will be able to give some objective information on how they find the education system as it is currently.

 

Hard to be optimistic about the future of the country, but who knows.... One thing you should make sure of before you leave Australia is that your daughter has Australian citizenship. At least she can always come back here if things continue to decline there. I agree pretty much with Pedro. It's going to be a very long difficult struggle to get the Philippines into anything resembling national prosperity. Population growth needs to be tackled first to have any hope.

 

Silibay, We are in a similar situation. my plan is to monitor the schools but I am also actively looking into accredited home school options. In the states there are several options available for materials. some are available on line and others by book and disk. My wife and I and possibly a hired tutor can work with the kids in addition to the local education. My wife wants the kids to go to Siliman elementary. I will be evaluating how much additional needs to be provided.

Perhaps AU has similar offerings available.

 

No, I have honestly never heard of that happening. What would be a "good" job in the Philippines anyway? If you mean earning anything near Western standards in a 'job', it simply doesn't happen here. Best 'job' would probably be for them to end up teaching English to Koreans for $1,000 per month.

 

:( Is there a First World Country Anymore? And an English Teacher on $1000 per month, my wife would like to know more. 12 years at Noreco2 in Accounts and still only on p$11.000 ( $250) per month and They are not bad payers at all.:o

 

I was helping one of Weena's kids with an English assignment yesterday and something like 4 out of 20 questions were flat out wrong because of incorrect grammar. No wonder she needed help with the assignment, I needed to guess on a couple of them myself. This book was from Foundation University, one of the better schools here.

There are two ways to get a good job here for a foreigner...

1. Build a business and create your own job. Preferably the business brings in money from abroad.

2. Get on an expat package with a foreign country.

 

Dude, that is IMPOSSIBLE! Don't you know the educational system here is one of the finest in the world?! Far above and beyond Western education...

It must be that you simply don't understand proper "Foundation English".

 

If you want to know the outcome, our effort resulted in a 19 out of 20. So one of our two guesses were wrong.

 

Dudster, you simply are not up to the Filipino English they teach here in school.

That means simply that there is a original language out there, changed into the American Version, totally mixed up in the Philippines with the addition of "own rules", with the intention to send this young people abroad just to find out that they can't write and speak ...

Here just a wonderful quote of the beginning of a job-application came on my desk a few hours ago (and that is certainly no exception, that is the standard...)

elow,.good day!,.,are u hiring a job?,.I am fresh graduate from NORSU taking up bachelor of ...


Throwing a kid from "the outer world" into the local education system is simply stealing it's chances in life.

You ain't reach anything with a tutor, as their quality equals the local education system. Additional to that, kids have to stand up before 6:00 am, are leaving the house before 7:am and come back after 5:00pm. (well, in this time they a third of the year for parades, founders day, dance and beauty contests or other impressive activities which have more value in filipino culture as education has)

So after doing the regular assignments and having dinner it is getting 6:30pm or later.

Now you get the tutor in (or on weekend, where kids actually should be allowed to be kids) and try to fix what the local teacher and books mess up during the day/week in a little time.

Good luck with getting the concentration and focus of a kid/teenager after 13 hrs up and kicking...

cheers

Rhoody