The indicators are too glaring to ignore and an acceptance and scrutiny of the gravity of problems facing education is a crucial step towards realizing Education for All in the Philippines . This had been the implicit stance of the National Education for All Committee (NEC) when it presented the country's draft Mid-Decade Assessment of EFA during the 8 th National EFA Coordinators' meeting organized by UNESCO in end February 2007. The report showed the country losing on many of its education targets, with the exception of gender parity in education. Access and completion is decreasing despite the construction of more schools and hiring of new teachers, learning outcomes remain below passing amid the conscious effort to expand and improve in-service training of teachers and an increasing number of children and youth staying out of school is becoming a phenomenon both in the rural and urban areas. This bleak picture has raised the alarm for the government, civil society and private sectors in the country and all agreed that unless drastic measures are done, the Philippines will inevitably fail in its EFA targets in 2015, in turn jeopardizing the country's development. The self-critical assessment of EFA has been a jumping board for the Department of Education (DepEd) to call on different stakeholders to share in the responsibility for education in a framework of public-private partnership. On the one hand, subscribing to Dakar 's Framework emphasizing civil society participation in EFA, civil society groups have actively sought out processes for EFA to pursue an education reform agenda that will extend quality education beyond the confines of the school. Yet another push for better education is coming from corporate foundations that have in the recent years, done their part through the Adopt a School Program with DepEd which aims at helping government build quality schools in a spirit of corporate social responsibility. Thus, the mid-EFA assessment while it reports on the weaknesses of the public basic education, heralds the work-in-progress partnerships of government, CSO and private sector in the EFA processes.
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