The best for our youngest?

It may not be obvious to many, but there is one statistic that strongly relates to how our country and economy have continuously slid further behind our peers in the last half-century: our high incidence of under-5 stunting, or the percentage of children aged 5 and below who fall well short of the average height for their age due to severe malnutrition. (“Well short of the average,” for those who understand statistics, means two standard deviations or more below the median height for age.)

This number has been inordinately high in the Philippines since the 1980s. At 45 percent then, it meant nearly one in every two children five and below. By 2003, it was 33.8 percent, but did not improve for the next 13 years. The World Bank sees us as having the fifth highest stunting prevalence in the East Asia and Pacific region, and among the top 10 countries worldwide with the most number of stunted children. Poverty has a lot to do with it; children from our poorest one-fifth families are twice as likely to be stunted than those from the top one-fifth. Still, nearly one in five children from even the richest one-fifth of our families is stunted.

One can better appreciate how critical this all is knowing that a child’s first five years is the most critical period in shaping his/her life-long outcomes. There’s a simple reason for this: 90 percent of human brain development occurs by age 5. Development institutions like the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme thus see strategic interventions in those early years as the most efficient and effective means to address persistent social and economic inequities. A child stunted at age 5 only has the remaining 10 percent of brain development left, hence is damaged for life with lifelong effects on her/his physical, cognitive, linguistic, and socio-emotional abilities. Where early childhood care and development, especially nutrition, are neglected and lead to high rates of stunting, overall society would reflect the adverse consequences.

Indeed, the signs have stared us in the face for the longest time: lowest average income and highest inflation and unemployment rates among our Asean peers, lowest export earnings and export-to-GDP ratio, lowest manufacturing investment inflows, weakest agricultural sector, lowest average IQ in all of Asean, worst education indicators not only regionally but globally, pathetic quality of governance and propensity to elect bad leaders—all of which I’ve written about before. Most commentaries trace them to the decline of education in the country. I go beyond and point to our unduly high severe malnutrition and stunting rate, greatly diminishing a third of our children’s capacity for education. Our education problem is not just about schools, textbooks, and teachers, but about too many of our children having difficulty learning. Even ample school buildings, textbooks, and teachers will not be enough.

For this reason, the ongoing Second Congressional Commission on Education (EdCom II) puts basic importance on early childhood care and development, rightly calling it “the critical window to holistic development.” Noting that over 20 million of our 109 million total population in 2020 are between 0 and 8 years old, EdCom II stresses in its Year 1 Report that these young children require proper nutrition, early education, and responsive caregiving to unfold their full potential. It cites research findings that every $1 invested in the early years could yield returns up to $17 for the most disadvantaged children, and stresses proper nutrition during the first 1,000 days of life. It sees the lack of coordination, resources, and accountability across the various government entities involved to be the major stumbling block. But we must further recognize that the ultimate culprit is our much higher food prices compared to our neighbors, which in turn traces to our persistent failure to improve productivity and competitiveness in our food and agriculture sector—of which I’ve already written much before.

On early education, EdCom II’s research and consultations revealed that despite Republic Act No. 6972 which requires a child development center (CDC) in every barangay, only 15,207 or barely over a third of our 42,027 barangays have at least one. They also found that most CDC teachers and workers are aging, with no proper training in early childhood education (ECE). The 224 higher education institutions offering formal ECE training have only produced 3,993 ECE graduates since 2005, a drop in the bucket of actual need. Yet even with requirements far outstripping supply, 89 percent of ECE teachers and workers hold temporary positions, paid an average of only P5,000 a month—and one in five get only P1,000!

If this reflects how we prioritize the youngest of our children, then I truly fear for our future.

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