My School’s Family Profile

Marisol Bliss Elementary School is a small public school located at Brgy. Ninoy Aquino, Angeles City, Philippines with a population of 564 pupils who belong mostly to impoverished families.

Through the years, the school has been struggling in terms of its physical, educational and financial needs,

As most public schools are known to have financial problems, my school suffers also the same state. Families in most public schools cannot afford to contribute to their compulsory PTA contributions

Therefore, our school cannot afford to sustain some of the important needs of our pupils who belong to families with majority of them having below poverty incomes. In the Philippines when you say below poverty line it means earning below 49 pesos which is about a dollar(US dollar) per day. Out of the 564 pupils, 498 of them or almost 90 percent of them live in homes with extended families. The number of members for every family would range from four to eight members who dwell in shanties and with temporary housing settlement. About 40 percent of our pupils are malnourished based on the survey conducted this July in our school.

With these scenario we usually seek support from our friends from the private sector since our government can’t fully support the needs of our schools. Luckily our school has been adopted many times by some private institutions, but still we really wanted real and unselfish support from the government itself.

I hope the government will understand the need to support these children…. I think children in the public schools are more driven to succeed in life since they really see the need to develop themselves as they are already exposed by the many difficulties and challenges in life, whereas, those belonging to affluent families would have to be less driven since everything is offered to them on a silver platter….though we can still find some who are disciplined and know the values of hardwork in achieving success……

We must believe in our children that each of them has a potential to succeed…