[Photo: Parents and teachers at Payatas C Elementary School repairing a classroom. Despite being situated in one of Manila's poorest areas, it is among the 10 schools with the highest grades in the last academic year.]

By Alastair McIndoe, Philippines Correspondent

IT IS still the holidays but Payatas C Elementary School is a hive of activity. Parents are painting classrooms, fixing desks and sweeping the grounds to prepare for next Monday's start of a new school year.

In the scorching afternoon heat, several men in their early 20s mix cement for the floor of a new classroom being built; all have children at the school.

With threadbare maintenance budgets, parents are pitching in to help ready the country's 44,000 state schools for a new academic year. The Department of Education estimates a record 1.5 million volunteers took part in the Brigada Eskuwela (meaning School Brigade) exercise, now in its third year.

Around 20 million children troop back to classes in public and private schools next Monday after a long summer break.

A new school year is also the time for hand-wringing editorials and commentaries in the local media over the ailing state of public education in the Philippines.

Overcrowded classrooms, poor facilities, high dropout rates caused by poverty and poorly paid teachers quitting for greener pastures top the concerns.

For Filipino households struggling on low incomes, getting a son or daughter through 10 years of basic schooling and then tertiary education to land a decent job can transform a family's fortunes.

'Education is the ticket out of poverty in the Philippines,' said Mr Paul Soriano, head of the Education Department's Adopt-A- School programme, which seeks private sector support for the country's cash-strapped public schools.

Against that backdrop, it is not hard to see why parents are keen to support their children's schools, even if it means taking a day off work, which many can ill-afford.

Since last Monday, around 50 parents a day have been volunteering at Payatas C Elementary, says principal Benjamin Caling.

Payatas is one of Metro Manila's poorest areas. Outside the school, convoys of trucks transport household garbage to the city's biggest dumpsite there.

'Many of our parents work there, but they help at the school because they want to change the lives of their children through education,' said Mr Caling.

'And it is not unusual for them to drop by to check that their children are attending classes,' he added.

Casual labourer Mac Butic, who earns around 250 pesos (S$7.80) a day, volunteered to help build a new classroom. 'My son is here in Grade 8 and I want him to have a future,' he said.

Incredibly, given the hardscrabble surroundings, Payatas C was among the 10 elementary schools in Metro Manila with the highest grades in the last academic year.

As a result, parents are scrambling to enrol their children there. Staff credit a big measure of that success to the determination of the children - 2,300 of them, aged between six and 12 - to get ahead.

Like many state schools in Philippine cities, Payatas C's classrooms are overcrowded. The national average is one teacher for 45 pupils in urban areas. Because of that high ratio, classes in most schools are held in two six-hour sessions, beginning at 6am.

The state offers free elementary and secondary education. And the Philippine Constitution mandates that education gets the biggest allotment in the national budget. But funds are tight all round due to weak revenue inflows and efforts to rein in the budget deficit.

A rising concern is the high dropout rates, as children from the poorest households get pulled from school to help their parents at work - or family budgets are so tight that they cannot stretch to transport fares and everyday schooling costs.

According to the United Nations' Millennium Development Goals, enrolment rates in primary education slid to 85 per cent in 2006 from 97 per cent in 2000.

The government is trying to staunch the dropout rate with feeding programmes and money- saving measures such as making uniforms non-compulsory.

There are no available data on the extent of attrition among the country's nearly 500,000 public school teachers, but it is said to be high. In the last academic year, the government reportedly needed to hire nearly 40,000 teachers. It had the budget for only 10,000.

Some relief may be in sight. The House of Representatives this month passed a measure to raise in phases the salaries of public workers. As things stand, the basic compensation for teachers at the bottom of the grade scale is just over 12,000 pesos a month. This would rise to 18,500 pesos under the planned increases.

Many leave to join the several million Filipinos working abroad. Some manage to stay in the profession; teaching English in Thailand or Vietnam, for example; others re-train as caregivers or go into other marketable professions.

For Mr Soriano, such challenges highlight the need for the community and private sector to become more involved in the public education system.

'They have to complement the government's efforts,' he said.

This article was first published in The Straits Times.