Last weekend, we attended the graduation of a young nephew here in Australia. A quiet milestone marked by ramen bowls and talk about life after school. No elaborate photo shoots, no loud celebrations, just a table, warm food, and a boy with no fear in his eyes. He knew, deep down, that whatever he chose next – university, apprenticeship, a gap year – there were systems in place to catch him. Not because he was wealthy, but because he was seen by a government that believes education is worth supporting.
Here, in Australia, bridges are built.
University is expensive, yes but students are supported through HECS-HELP, an income-contingent loan that you only start paying once you’re earning above a decent threshold. You don’t need to mortgage your family’s future just to take a shot at yours. There’s structure, foresight, flexibility.
Then I think of home.
In the Philippines, education still looks like a wall. One stacked with overpriced laptops, “smart” classrooms filled with dumb procurement choices, and learners asked to leap without parachutes. In 2021, the Department of Education allocated over PHP 4.4 billion for laptop purchases. By 2023, the Commission on Audit flagged these same laptops for being slow, outdated, and marked up by more than double their market price. Units that cost PHP 58,000 were comparable to models sold for around PHP 22,000 by private suppliers.
That’s not just inefficiency. That’s insult. Especially when public school teachers often spend out of pocket just to buy chalk, paper, or working Wi-Fi.
Of course, we’re not comparing apples to apples. The scale is different. The histories are different. But the stench is the same every time: it smells like corruption. And in a country where every peso counts, that smell is suffocating.
Because while students in Australia cross bridges into possibility, many in the Philippines are just learning how to climb walls that shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
And the worst part? We’ve gotten used to it. We normalize government failure by romanticizing resilience. By applauding the students who “make it despite everything.”
But they shouldn’t have to.
They deserve an education system that believes in them not just to survive, but to dream, to fail, to start over, to become. They deserve bridges, too.